On June 11, DataBreaches.net noted a report that Lake City, Florida was struggling to recover from “triple threat ransomware.” The attack had occurred on May 10, and one month later, the city’s landline phones were still knocked out and other services were also affected, although emergency services were operating.
Now, one week after another Florida city, Riviera Beach, decided to pay the equivalent of almost $600,000 ransom after they were attacked, Lake City has agreed to pay almost $500,000 ransom to its attackers. When the costs of this breach are tabulated, including any replacement hardware and consulting fees, legal fees, etc., this will likely be a very costly breach for Lake City.
Whether the attackers are the same individual or group or not is unknown, but with two Florida cities paying high ransoms within a short period of time, I think we can reasonably predict many more attacks with ransom demands in the half-million to million-dollar range.
CBS News reports:
The mayor of Lake City told CBS 47 Action News Jax on Tuesday that the small city in northern Florida would give the hackers $460,000 to hand back control of email and other servers seized two weeks ago.
Read more on CBS.