A US city named New Bedford located in Massachusetts, US has reportedly become a victim of a ransomware attack in July this year. Although this incident happened almost two months ago, Jon Mitchell, the Mayor of New Bedford decided to reveal the details through a press conference on Wednesday this week.
According to the media update given by Mitchell, a ransomware infection hit the digital database of the City on July 4th this year. Further probe revealed that the hackers succeeded in the installing RYUK ransomware- a prevalent ransomware strain in the cyber landscape as off now.
It’s reported that the attack led to the encryption of files on more than 158 workstations which accounted for 4% of the city’s total Computer systems fleet ranging in thousands.
The City’s IT staff realized the malware infection the next day and chose to shut down the systems to contain the ransomware.
While a probe was underway, some senior officials from the New Bedford city tried to contact the hackers via email who put forward a ransom demand worth $5.3 million before them- all to be made in Bitcoins cryptocurrency.
As the city was facing a shortage of funds, it chose to negotiate with the hackers offering them $400,000 in ransom.
However, the attackers chose to decline the offer touting it as low pay for their hard work.
Since a consensus between the hackers and the victim failed to take place, the New Bedford Mayor decided to do the data recovery from the available backups.
