Police Department Infected Again by Ransomware Attack that Already Locked 1 Year of Work Related Files

Ransomware attack again took place on Riverside, Texas Police department computer server that already lost around 10 months of sensitive data by previous ransomware attack.

Ransomware has been locked the files and also it delete some of the files which was stored in the infected computer server.

U.S. Secret Service agents involved in this case and the investigation has been conducted on the infected servers.

First Ransomware attack has been reported on April 23 that cause police officials unable to access about a year’s worth of files.

The second attempt of this ransomware attack has been discovered on may 4  and now the US Secret Service agents started the further investigation.

Riverside officials have determined that it was unclear how this attack has been taken place and they planned to meet May 15 with the city’s third-party information technology company.

Ransomware Attack Motivation

Cyber Criminals infect the police department computer server via Email based infection vectors and demand to pay ransom amount in bitcoin.

Riverside Carpenter said, “We’re still trying to get to the bottom of how the attack was initiated and the recent virus attacked the city’s server Friday afternoon and erased about eight hours worth of data.”

During the first attack that happened on April 23 cause, many of the sensitive files were not able to access.

In this case, Officials said, “Everything was backed-up, but we lost about eight hours worth of information we have to re-enter,” he said. “It was our police and fire records, so we just re-enter the reports.”

Infected files contain the host of personal data about individuals — victims, suspects, witnesses and police officers themselves and also some of the other personal information such as include Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, insurance policy numbers, medical information.

You can read the complete Ransomware Attack Response and Mitigation Checklist to protect yourself from ransomware attacks.