As it became known last week, Montreal's public transportation system, Société de transport de Montreal (STM), fell victim to a ransomware. And on Wednesday, it said it does not intend to pay the ransom demanded by the malicious actor.
As the STM reported, "after contacting the hacker, a ransom demand of $2.8 million was made."
«STM remains firm in its decision not to act on this request.»
The attack took place on October 19 and affected 1,000 of the transport system's 1,600 servers. Of these, 624 are considered operationally sensitive.
By Thursday, STM reported that 77% of its 624 servers had been restored, «thanks to the hard work of the IT teams».
The investigation being conducted to locate the malicious software used in the attack has not yielded results yet.
The STM said, however, that the ransomware attack operated similarly to RansomExx and that it occurred as a result ofphishing.
The STM website was down for a while, but the company says no data and that bus and metro services were not affected.
Meanwhile, the paratransit was restored on October 25.
Additionally, STM said that its 11,000 employees had received their pay in «nearly normal manner» and that all of its suppliers had been paid.
The STM says it will not release further details about the nature of the attack until investigations.
The public transportation system is not the only local organization that has been targeted by an attack recently.
On Thursday , Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé confirmed that the CIUSSS Centre-Ouest-de-l'île-de-Montreal , a regional health agency, had also been targeted by a cyberattack. The CIUSSS said it has launched an investigation into the matter and that so far, there is nothing to suggest that patient or staff information has been compromised or stolen.
