NC county will not make ransom payment to cyber criminals who attacked public services
Source: Associated Press
By RACHEL KATZ
Dec 6, 2017, 6:47 PM ET
Mecklenburg County, North Carolina on Wednesday refused to pay a ransom to cyber-criminals who disabled many of the county's computer applications and demanded $23,000 to unlock the software, official said in a press release.
“I am confident that our backup data is secure and we have the resources to fix this situation ourselves,” County Manager Dena Diorio said in a statement on the county's website. “It will take time, but with patience and hard work, all of our systems will be back up and running as soon as possible.”
The statement said it would take several days to fix the problem using backup data from before the incident to "rebuild the applications from scratch." Systems involving Health and Human Services, the court system and Land Use and Environmental Services are top priority, according to the statement.
“It was going to take almost as long to fix the system after paying the ransom as it does to fix it ourselves,” Diorio said in the statement. “And there was no guarantee that paying the criminals was a sure fix.”
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/nc-county-make-ransom-payment-cyber-criminals-attacked/story?id=51625915
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