Salisbury police a victim of ransomware assault

Earlier in January, a ransomware assault hit Salisbury city which could have endangered the cyber network of the city's police department. On 9th January, Salisbury Police Department's Captain Rich Kaiser said officers could not access databases on their computers.

The ransomware assault compromised the whole internal PC-network of the department of Salisbury, Maryland. Ransomware attacks are one kind of cyber assault which renders a given PC's data-files non-accessible following the attacker encrypting or locking the said files after which the attacker claims he should be paid for release of the decryption key.

Bill Garrett, Information Systems Director examined the malicious program that enabled him to comprehend the hacker's activity which locked certain vital software followed with asking to be paid. Fortunately, according to police, the intruder didn't take down or get away with one-or-more files stored on the department's computer.

Garrett explained the incident was simply for encoding certain files and thereafter an attempt at extorting cash from the department. According to him, attackers hacked the software supplier of the city followed with endangering his computer as there was client database on it. For recovering from ransomware assaults the chief way was using backup databases previously and regularly maintained. And because the department had them it didn't require getting the decryption code from the attackers. However, the department was at disadvantage over some days until it restored the lost data-files without eventually losing anything due to the backups, the director added. www.wboc.com posted this, January 24, 2019.

Kaiser, referring to the assault against Salisbury Police Department stated on January 23 that authorities tried negotiating about a sum of money the attacker demanded; however, the negotiation didn't sustain.

There have been many other recent entities across the country that had been victimized with the kind of cyber assault that SPD suffered. SPD is engaged in a joint task with FBI for identifying and catching the perpetrators. As investigation goes on, Garrett stated his office too had restricted the supplier through which the assault occurred in order that the information services could be called upon incase something further to "barebones access" was needed from the computer of SPD.

» SPAMfighter News - 1/29/2019