SamSam Ransomware attack which struck the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) last week, has struck again on Thursday this week in a different form. The officials of the CDOT said that malware this time appears to be a new variant and is much more sophisticated than the previous SamSam Ransomware attack.
“We had 20% of computers up and running when our security teams redetected malicious activity on Thursday this week”, said Brandi Simmons, a spokeswoman from the CDOT Information Technology Department.
Mrs. Simmons added that the tools the department has in place didn’t work in nullifying the malware as it is way ahead of the present technology.
On Feb 21st last month, the agency was struck with SamSam Ransomware taking down over 2,000 computer systems offline. The officials of the transport department did not wish to bow to the ransomware authors and instead chose to use backup systems for data recovery.
Now, all those systems which remained infected with SamSam ransomware are showing signs of being infected by a new malware. Means, the previous ransomware infection appears to be transformed into a new malware which has locked the files from access.
Meanwhile, reports are pouring in for a separate incident related to the city of Leeds ransomware attack. A source from Daily Mail suggests that Leeds was hit with a ransomware attack last week, which forced the Birmingham suburb to pay hackers $12,000 in bitcoins to gain back access to the encrypted systems.
The Birmingham suburb’s Deputy Mayor David Miller has confirmed the incident and said that the incident is being investigated by the law enforcement and he has been prohibited from commenting further until the investigation gets full probed.
