US School District Paralyzed By 500 BTC Ransomware Attack
A bitcoin ransomware attack on a New Jersey school district has grown into an investigation involving multiple US government agencies. The Swedesboro-Woolwich School District, which encompasses four elementary schools in Gloucester County, New Jersey, was forced to delay a statewide standardized test earlier this week after the ransomware was discovered over the weekend. As reported by local news source the South Jersey Times, hackers behind the attack have demanded 500 BTC, worth roughly $125,000 at press time. Investigators from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the....
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Paying the fee associated with a ransomware should always be seen as a last resort. There is no guarantee the decryption keys will restore full system access or revert all data back to its original state. The University of Calgary is the most recent victim of ransomware attacks, and the school paid CND$20,000 in Bitcoin to get rid of the malware. Despite paying the fee, not all systems are back online, as the provided decryption keys do not restore all systems automatically. Trouble started brewing for the University of Calgary on May 28, and students were advised not to connect their....
In a ransomware attack, it is assumed that the hackers prefer the ransom being paid in bitcoin due to the anonymous nature of its transactions. It might not be true as the hackers are probably interested in bitcoin for entirely different reasons. Bitcoin and Ransomware, these words appear more frequently in a single sentence these days than we wish for. Ransomware attacks have become a common occurrence these days. We had earlier reported the use of Advertising network by cyber criminals to propagate ransomware to the computers belonging to the readers of some of the leading news websites.....
A global ransomware attack derived from a leaked NSA tool successfully breached into 100,000 computer systems and servers across 99 countries. During the first day of the attack, the focus was set on Bitcoin instead, which had minimal involvement in the ransomware attack, rather than the use of an NSA tool developed using taxpayers’ capital. What actually happened. On May 12, the WannaCry ransomware began to spread across the world, attacking 75,000 computers in a matter of hours. According to MalwareTech, WannaCry targeted and encrypted 100,000 computers in a period of 24 hours, quickly....
Another hospital was attacked again with a crypto-locking malware called “Locky.” Henderson Kentucky Methodist Hospital had announced an “Internal State of Emergency” after the system was infected by the malicious computer program. Just after the recent Ottawa hospital attack and the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center extortion, which allowed hackers....
India has experienced the first ransomware attack on a small Ayurvedic pharmaceutical firm in the state of Punjab. Employees of a small Indian Ayurvedic pharmaceutical company were in for a shock recently after their systems were hit by a ransomware attack. The attack which happened last month was reported by the mainstream media only recently. According to media reports, servers of an Amritsar, Punjab-based Shri Dhanvantari Herbals were targeted by cyber criminals, infecting them with ransomware. The attack was discovered after the firm’s employees found themselves unable to log into....