[BreachExchange] Montgomery County pays ransom, gets data back

[Inga Goddijn]

http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2017/09/25/montgomery-county-pays-ransom-gets-data-back/699876001/

With the erasure of millions of pieces of data imminent, Montgomery County
officials were forced to pay a ransom to hackers.

Over the weekend, Montgomery County paid between $40,000 and $50,000 to
obtain 9 bitcoins, an online currency not recognized by any government or
bank, to pay off hackers that had stolen county data last week.

The county was given seven days to pay or have its data erased. With time
running low, officials opted to pay the hackers half of the money Saturday
and the rest Sunday, receiving a chunk of data each time.

"You don't think about these things till they happen," said Elton Dean,
county commission chairman. "When you are talking about losing about $5
million worth of files, that's kind of like an emergency situation."

Initially, the county attempted to recover its data from backup files, Lou
Ialacci, Montgomery county's chief information technology officer, said
last week. But the nearly 70 terabytes of data proved difficult to retrieve
from the county's backup trove, he said, because of difficulties unrelated
to the hack.

The FBI and some other law enforcement agencies warn against paying off
ransoms because it encourages similar acts. There have also been several
cases where the ransom is paid, and the data is never returned.

But Montgomery officials did pay, joining the thousands of people and
businesses that pony up ransom money every year. In 2016, there were about
4,000 attacks every day. And in the first three months of last year, more
than $209 million in ransomware payments had been made.
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