DailyPost 2130
CANADIAN TOWN UNDER RANSOMWARE ATTACK!
Every single ransomware is a time to brood, whether we will ever change our cyber security stance. It would need a monumental effort, more for organizations with meagre resources or with irresponsible users or both. Expertise and user responsibility will show the way. You will improve only when you get into it lock, stock and barrel. Its not a part time or outsource game. Presumably, there is no choice either. The romance of ransomware attacks with local self-governing bodies is not new. When WannaCry had been declared dead and gone for long, it resurfaced in quite a few municipalities in the US in 2019. Some of them ended up paying ransom.
Few underwent the ordeal for a long time. Suffice with the all the resources they could garner, inclusive of the federal ones, they were not very lucky with the results. If WannaCry exploit could not be patched for two long years, who is there to be blamed. It was told there were still a million computers in the wild post 2017. It was then said it would take a minimum of five months to get near normalcy if the ransom was not paid. And the story seems be getting re-enacted, this time its Canada.
An entire Canadian town is being extorted by ransomware cyber criminals. The small Ontario, Canadian town of St. Mary’s has been targeted. The ransomware gang is LockBit. So far, there is no news of ransom being paid. There website reports of investigating the source of the incident, restoring the backup data and also assess the impact on the information. They are confident that they would come out successfully based on the nature of team available with them to crack the case and restore operational normalcy. Their internal server was locked and data was encrypted. They claim that the city functions are running normally despite the attack.
This is the latest in the long list of municipalities / organizations plagued with ransomware attacks. IC3/FBI released a report that municipalities are more frequently targeted, causing significant strain on resources. Best practices these types of cyber breaches / ransomware attacks have also been indicated in the same report. LockBit has released a tool to see whether your data has been stolen. As the data is not leaked as yet, it can be presumed they are expecting a ransom payment. Great are the ways of conducting crime in the Cyber world and the world watches. A ransomware gang having a website. What a business! We just hope this small town is able to resolve this issue with much adverse fallout.
RANSOMWARE IS REDEFINING CRIME.
Sanjay Sahay