https://www.cyberscoop.com/fbi-ransomware-summit/
By Sean Lyngaas
CYBERSCOOP
November 6, 2019
In March, officials in sparsely populated Jackson County, Georgia, made a
painful decision. Rather than rebuild their networks from scratch, they paid
$400,000 to hackers to get the county’s data back.
The six-figure amount — eclipsed by a nearly $600,000 payment made by a Florida
city in June — is symptomatic of a much larger problem. Across the U.S., poorly
secured businesses, local governments, and schools have lost millions of
dollars to attackers who can cheaply buy access to ransomware-as-a-service kits
on underground forums.
The problem is by some measures growing more acute: Over 100 public-sector
ransomware attacks have been reported in 2019 alone, double the amount in 2018.
To help stem the tide of file-locking attacks, the FBI quietly convened the
country’s top ransomware experts in an unprecedented, closed-door conference in
September. The briefings, which occurred over two days, were a recognition by
law enforcement officials that their ability to better investigate and
prosecute ransomware cases hinges on the private sector sharing more data with
them.
[...]
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