FBI Now Warns Victims to Not Pay Ransom
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 05/03/2016 09:54 AM
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The FBI is warning about an uptick in ransomware. The warning comes at the same time as a Michigan utility continues to recover from an attack disclosed one week ago.
Lansing Board of Water and Light is still trying to recover from a ransom attack that has kept the utilities email system and other administrative systems inaccessible since the attack.
“BWL and its experts will work continuously until they are satisfied that all systems are fully functional and validated with industry standard security protocols,” the company said.
The FBI, meanwhile, urges organizations to be vigilant keeping browsers, operating systems and third-party application patch levels up to date, and that antimalware protection is also current. They do not endorse paying the ransom, which is a turn in policy.
“The inability to access the important data these kinds of organizations keep can be catastrophic in terms of the loss of sensitive or proprietary information, the disruption to regular operations, financial losses incurred to restore systems and files, and the potential harm to an organization’s reputation,” the FBI said.
“Paying a ransom doesn’t guarantee an organization that it will get its data back—we’ve seen cases where organizations never got a decryption key after having paid the ransom,” said FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director James Trainor. “Paying a ransom not only emboldens current cyber criminals to target more organizations, it also offers an incentive for other criminals to get involved in this type of illegal activity. And finally, by paying a ransom, an organization might inadvertently be funding other illicit activity associated with criminals.”
Source: Threat Post
Lansing Board of Water and Light is still trying to recover from a ransom attack that has kept the utilities email system and other administrative systems inaccessible since the attack.“BWL and its experts will work continuously until they are satisfied that all systems are fully functional and validated with industry standard security protocols,” the company said.
The FBI, meanwhile, urges organizations to be vigilant keeping browsers, operating systems and third-party application patch levels up to date, and that antimalware protection is also current. They do not endorse paying the ransom, which is a turn in policy.
“The inability to access the important data these kinds of organizations keep can be catastrophic in terms of the loss of sensitive or proprietary information, the disruption to regular operations, financial losses incurred to restore systems and files, and the potential harm to an organization’s reputation,” the FBI said.
“Paying a ransom doesn’t guarantee an organization that it will get its data back—we’ve seen cases where organizations never got a decryption key after having paid the ransom,” said FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director James Trainor. “Paying a ransom not only emboldens current cyber criminals to target more organizations, it also offers an incentive for other criminals to get involved in this type of illegal activity. And finally, by paying a ransom, an organization might inadvertently be funding other illicit activity associated with criminals.”
Source: Threat Post
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