The rise of cryptocurrency in 2017 resulted in an uptick in crypto-mining attacks (1.65 million computers affected in the first 8 months of 2017 according to the Kaspersky Labs), while seeing a decrease in ransomware attacks. Hackers have seen an opportunity to make more money hacking into people’s PCs and smartphones (typically done via spam and phishing campaigns) which doesn’t require additional action on behalf of the victim, like paying a ransom, beyond opening and installing the malware that silently carries out the mining.
Although it might be easier to mine Monero (a popular cryptocurrency), using a victims CPUs, that didn’t stop a hacker (group) from attacking the City of Atlanta with a ransomware attack on Thursday. City officials reported issues surrounding access to internal applications, while customer facing applications were experiencing outages.
The hackers were asking for $6,800 per computer or $51,000 in Bitcoin. Although it was not reported how the hackers exposed the City of Atlanta, it’s known that municipalities and city departments are seen as low hanging fruit to cybercriminals as their technology is usually out-dated.
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If you’d like to read more about the cyber attack on the City of Atlanta, click here.