Ransomware is officially on the rise. According to Bloomberg, the number of known attacks surpassed five million in 2015 and is expected to rise even higher this year.
For those who don’t know, Ransomware is software that locks your entire system by encrypting your files. The hackers on the other end refuse to give you the keys to ‘unlock’ it until you’ve paid them a considerable sum of money.
Just last week, Methodist Hospital in Kentucky was held hostage and many of its vital systems had to be shut down while the IT staff declared an ‘internal state of emergency’ in an attempt to mitigate the issue.
“Locky” was the malicious malware that came into the network as an attachment in an email. After it infected the computer it was triggered on, it successfully spread across the network to several other pc’s before the IT staff ordered all pc’s be shutdown. The message left on the affected machines is a demand of payment in bitcoins, an internet currency.
In this case the Methodist Hospital in Kentucky chose to play hard ball and not pay the ransom of 4 bitcoins (about $1600). However, the same decision wasn’t made last month at the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles. That medical institution payed out over $16,000 (40 bitcoins) to get out of their hostage situation. They decided that compliance with the ransom demand was a better option for the staff, hospital and the patients.
Although they are not alone in their submission to the hackers, police departments in Massachusetts and Illinois have also followed suit, we should all find it troubling that some of the institutions that are charged with taking care of and protecting us are forking money over to cybercriminals because of their lack of security protocols and backups.