Florence City to Pay $300,000 as Ransom After their System was Infected with Ransomware

In late May, threat actors infiltrated information technology systems of Florence City in Alabama and infected with ransomware. The city’s IT department along with outside agency is working to investigate the attack.

KrebsOnSecurity alerted by several City of Florence officials that they had been hit with ransomware operators and they are demanding $300,000 ransom worth of bitcoin.

Florence’s city mayor was alerted by KrebsOnSecurity, that their Windows 10 system in their IT environment controlled by threat actors.

“Comparing the information shared by Hold Security dark web specialist Yuliana Bellini with the employee directory on the Florence website indicated the username for the computer that attackers had used to gain a foothold belongs city’s manager of information systems.”

Florence city Mayor Steve Holt confirmed that cyberattacks had shut down the city’s email system. A system administrator who contacted Krebs stated that the compromised computer and network account had been isolated.

“We’re having to approach it from the standpoint that we’re going to have to assume—we know they have some of our information, we don’t know that they have our critical information, frankly don’t think they do but we don’t know,” Mayor Holt said.

Now the city officials planned to pay the ransom demand to keep the personal data of their citizens safe from the expose.

The city-systems infected with DoppelPaymer ransomware strain first observed in June 2019, the ransomware known for asking ransom payments between $25,000 to $1,200,000 worth of Bitcoin.

Here is the DoppelPaymer ransomware note;

DoppelPaymer ransomware known for stealing data from victims before launching the ransomware and threatens to publish data online if the ransom not paid.

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