![]() “To get a decryption key because they had no other way of recovering the data? For a pinky promise that stolen data would be destroyed? Both?” “The question is, what did they pay for and why?” said Brett Callow, a threat analyst at Emsisoft, an anti-virus company. It was not clear who had authorized the ransom payment. He declined to say when the ransom had been paid, “out of concern that it could affect the ongoing criminal investigation.” The county’s share of the funds came from its risk management department, Wert said. Wert said the county and its insurer agreed to pay the $1.1-million ransom to “restore the system’s full functionality and secure any data involved in the breach.” The extent of the attack, including whether sensitive information was compromised or stolen, is still under investigation, Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Gloria Huerta said. The Sheriff’s Department discovered the hack on April 7. entities and extort payouts that are designed to be untraceable, the sources said. The hackers have ties to a larger network of Russian hacking operations that regularly target U.S. The hackers who targeted the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department work out of Eastern Europe, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the incident. They’re supposed to be keeping people safe, and here they are, paying ransom to criminals.” Being hacked is embarrassing for any organization, but “even more embarrassing when it’s a police agency making this decision. “It could be a sanctioned entity, whether it’s Iran, whether it’s North Korea, whether it’s a terrorist organization.”Īnd, Neuman said, there are the optics to think about. “If you’re paying through cryptocurrency, you don’t know who you’re paying it to,” Neuman said. It’s exceedingly rare for ransoms to be paid for hacks involving law enforcement agencies, in part because of who could be on the receiving end of the transaction, said Clifford Neuman, the director of USC’s Center for Computer Systems Security. The FBI says it does not pay ransom in such attacks and advises victims not to either.
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