Computer systems at Mecklenburg County hacked

According to Dena Diorio Manager of Mecklenburg County, a hacker recently took offline the computer systems at the county while had demanded a ransom payment for giving back the files' access to the PC-operators.

Dealing with the hacker, arrests took place that deputies processed while paper records from building code officials helped a very big county of North Carolina towards responding to the situation where the county's servers stood derailed with ransom demanded in exchange of restoring them.

Speaking to reporters, Diorio stated that authorities got December 6, time 1pm as the deadline for making the decision if they must pay 2 Bitcoins as a ransom alternatively over USD 23,000.

The deadline got over; however, nothing was instantly clear about the form of decision by authorities at the county. A few websites continued to be non-functional, while according to one county spokesman, no further information was possible to release. Officials revealed there was likely to be one news conference during Wednesday afternoon.

Diorio stated the freezing of the county computer files followed from the cyber-attack which began as one county employee clicked on an e-mail attachment containing malware. Washington Post posted this, December 6, 2017.

Anjanette Flowers Grube, Spokeswoman of the Sheriff's Office of Mecklenburg County stated within an electronic mail that deputies were engaged in manual processing of suspects understandably under arrest since the county's PCs were affected. Moreover according to the Sheriff, Mecklenburg's jail website was not showing inmate search details which were usually easily obtainable.

Diorio, meanwhile, stated that making the ransom payment hadn't been ruled out.

A cyber-security expert said ransomware using hackers targeting municipalities weren't uncommon. For instance, during 2016, a hacking assault against the mass transit device at San Francisco resulted in the permission of free rides during one weekend as there were problems with data compilation.

Cyber-reason's Senior Director Ross Rustici for Intelligence Services said ransomware assaults on rural governments hit headlines after every two months or so. According to him, such governments and even local governments enabled hackers to target them easily as those characteristically ran older systems as well as non-updated software unlike federal government or corporations.

» SPAMfighter News - 12/14/2017