About three weeks ago, the city of Riviera Beach, Florida, was hit by a ransomware attack. The hackers stole important data and demanded money. Yesterday, the city council finally decided to pay the required amount of money (over $600,000) in order to get the encrypted data back.
It took about three weeks for this decision to be made, as city officials struggled to figure out how to deal with the situation. They reportedly succumbed to the hackers' blackmail after realizing there was no other way to recover the files city's.
Attack
The attack took place on May 29th, when an employee of the Riviera Beach Police Department opened an email. That was enough to infect the city's entire network with ransomware.
The ransomware locked all files and shut down all services city. Since then, no service in Riviera Beach has been operational, except for the emergency services, although they are experiencing some issues.
The website , mail server and payment system have been downsince that day. Communication within the city is now done face-to-face, by phone or through wall-mounted notices.
This whole situation has major consequences for the city's residents.
City pays another $941,000 for new systems
City officials held an initial meeting on June 3, five days after the attack, and decided to invest in new equipment. Specifically, 941,000 $ for the acquisition of 310 new desktop computers and 90 new laptops, in an effort to rebuild the city's IT infrastructure from scratch.
Initially, the city did not want to give in to the gang's blackmail and give up the money. However, as time passed, and with the pressure that arose because all the services remained closed, the authorities realized that they had no other choice. The only way to recover their old records was to give up the money.
On Monday, city officials met again and unanimously decided to allow the person in charge to pay the 65 bitcoins ($603,000) to the criminals.
The city of Riviera Beach is a suburb north of Palm Beach, Florida. Last year, another suburb, Palm Springs, was also the victim of a ransomware attack. In that case, the city paid the ransom, but lost two years of data.
