Florida city fires IT employee after paying ransom demand last week [View all]

[Eugene]

Source: ZDNet

Florida city fires IT employee after paying ransom demand last week

At least one head rolls after second Florida city pays gigantic ransom demand to ransomware gang.

By Catalin Cimpanu for Zero Day | July 1, 2019 -- 17:25 GMT (10:25 PDT) | Topic: Security

Officials from Lake City, Florida, have fired an IT employee last week after the city was forced to approve a gigantic ransomware payment of nearly $500,000 last Monday.

The employee, whose name was not released, was fired on Friday, according to local media reports [1, 2], who cited the Lake City mayor.

The city's IT manager is also planning to revamp the town's entire IT department to prevent a similar incident from happening in the future.

AFTERMATH OF THE "TRIPLE THREAT" ATTACK

Lake City's IT network was infected with malware on June 10. The city described the incident as a "triple threat."

In reality, an employee opened a document they received via email, which infected the city's network with the Emotet trojan, which later downloaded the TrickBot trojan, and later, the Ryuk ransomware.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.zdnet.com/article/florida-city-fires-it-employee-after-paying-ransom-demand-last-week/