It is frustrating when you've worked hard on a document, the computer freezes up when you're nearly done, and when you reboot there is nothing left.
Now imagine city officials in Atlanta, some of whom say they've lost more than a decade of work thanks to a cyber attack. That would leave a knot in your stomach, for sure.
Atlanta was hit more than a week ago with SamSam ransomware. Some say their offices have completely lost records, while others are trying to put the pieces back together.
CNBC has a chilling article on the impacts:
Police and other public servants have spent the past week trying to piece together their digital work lives, recreating audit spreadsheets and conducting business on mobile phones in response to one of the most devastating "ransomware" virus attacks to hit an American city.
Three city council staffers have been sharing a single clunky personal laptop brought in after cyber extortionists attacked Atlanta's computer network with a virus that scrambled data and still prevents access to critical system.
"It's extraordinarily frustrating," said Councilman Howard Shook, whose office lost 16 years of digital records.
Forbes covered the story, as well, saying we need to look at the big picture here—well beyond the pain Atlanta is feeling right now:
Atlanta joins a growing number of municipal, state and government-level targets to fall prey to an increasingly complex cyber threat environment. Just as a heating and cooling vendor served as the backdoor to Target’s breach, cities may very well be a backdoor to broader cyber vulnerabilities affecting U.S. national security. In short, our lawmakers and governments are not immune to a risk that evolves according to Moore’s Law – a painful lesson Atlanta’s public servants learned during an arduous recovery.
A Moore's Law for cyber attacks? That would be a nightmare for InfoSec. Let's hope that is an exaggeration.
Did Atlanta pay the $51,000 ransom hackers demanded?
City officials have refused to comment on many questions from reporters about whether the city paid the attack ransom by the March 28 deadline.
If the city did, either the keys did not work at all or they did not work easily, because the city is still struggling to rebound.
You can see the Atlanta ransomware updates here.
And SecureWorld will continue to report on recovery and remediation efforts by Atlanta following the city's SamSam ransomware attack.
