Florida city pays hackers $600K in bitcoin to get computer systems back
A small city in Florida has agreed to pay nearly $600,000 in bitcoin ransom to hackers who took control of its computer systems in a ransomware attack, according to reports.
The Riviera Beach City Council on Monday unanimously approved its insurance carrier to pay 65 bitcoin — valued at about $592,000 — in hopes of regaining full access to its network, the Palm Beach Post reported.
The attack two weeks ago wiped out the city’s entire computer system. The city council was left without email and phone service, direct-deposit paychecks had to be hand-delivered instead and the police department had to change over to paper tickets for traffic citations.
The police and fire departments also had to write down 911 calls, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. They receive about 280 calls a day.
Systems that control city finances and water utility pump stations and testing systems also were affected.
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The city hopes the hackers will provide a decryption key — meaning there’s no guarantee that that will happen.
“It’s a risk,” Council Chairwoman KaShamba Miller-Anderson told the Palm Beach Post on Wednesday. “Those were the two options: Either do it or don’t.”
Justin Williams, the interim information technology manager, told the council that the city website and email were back up, as well as the finance department system and water pump stations.
He said it will cost more than $1 million to completely fix and insure the affected systems.
Officials believe the hack originated on May 29, when someone in the police department opened an email infected with malware.
The FBI, Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security are investigating.
Council members in Riviera Beach, a city of about 35,000 just north of West Palm Beach, approved the payment without discussion.
“This whole thing is so new to me and so foreign and it’s almost where I can’t even believe that this happens but I’m learning that it’s not as uncommon as we would think it is,” Miller-Anderson said. “Every day I’m learning how this even operates because it just sounds so far-fetched to me.”
Hackers who took over Baltimore’s computer systems in a May 7 attack have demanded $76,000 in bitcoin ransom, the Baltimore Sun reported. The city has so far refused to pay.
The cost of that attack is an estimated $18.2 million.
