May 12, 2017

Pennsylvania Democrats will not pay ransom

Source: CNN

(CNN)Pennsylvania Democrats will not be paying a ransom to unidentified cyberattackers, the state senate's top Democrat Jay Costa told reporters Monday.

The computers of the Pennsylvania State Senate Democratic Caucus remained locked after a Friday morning ransomware attack encrypted the lawmakers' server, and hackers demanded a payment in return for an access key.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/us/pennsylvania-democrats-ransom-hacking/index.html

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This seems to be part of a worldwide attack that started in Europe.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/12/health/uk-nhs-cyber-attack/index.html

********* IMPORTANT NOTE *********
Edited to add: My sincere apologies. The Pennsylvania story is from March. The British story is current and it links to the PA story, hence my confusion. The attack in Europe is breaking news. The PA story is not.

Edited to add: If you have a Windows machine make sure to keep curent with your updates! A patch for this was released in March.