By Editor|2019-06-04T10:08:49+00:00June 4th, 2019|Comments Off on Ransomware Hits Baltimore: How City Officials Are Dealing With The Attack

Ransomware Hits Baltimore: How City Officials Are Dealing With The Attack

A recent cyberattack on the city of Baltimore is unique amongst similar stories of its type due to one fact: the tool being used by the hackers was developed and stolen from the NSA in 2017, according to an article in The New York Times.

“Since that leak, foreign intelligence agencies and rogue actors have used EternalBlue to spread malware that has paralyzed hospitals, airports, rail and shipping operators, A.T.M.s and factories that produce critical vaccines,” write Nicole Perlroth and Scott Shane. “Now the tool is hitting the United States where it is most vulnerable, in local governments with aging digital infrastructure and fewer resources to defend themselves.”

The NSA denied that the program came from within its agency in a statement to the Times at the end of May. 

Regardless of the origin, the hack caused significant disruption to the city for three weeks, as city officials refused to pay the $100,000 ransom and put workarounds into place. The Baltimore Sun reported that the estimated cost of recovery and lost or delayed revenue is at least $18.2 million, according to a city council budget hearing. “While the estimated cost of recovery is vastly higher than the ransom, the city still likely would have needed to spend money to bolster its defenses to prevent a future breach,” wrote Ian Duncan in The Sun. 

In the debate following the breach over whether the ransom should have been paid, experts point out that the damage caused by capitulating to hacker demands can outweigh the immediate cost. “No one should be paying ransoms, but public entities, like city governments and police departments, have a particular responsibility to protect the public good by doing the slow, hard, expensive work of restoring and securing their systems rather than taking the easy way out—which will, in the end, only make everything harder,” wrote Josephine Wolff in Slate.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/us/nsa-hacking-tool-baltimore.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/us/nsa-baltimore-ransomware.html

https://slate.com/technology/2019/05/baltimore-ransomware-robbinhood-attack-bernard-young.html

https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-ransomware-email-20190529-story.html

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