Tewksbury Cops Got Hacked And Had To Pay The Hackers $500 To Get Control Of Their Computers Back
(Globe) — At first, the problems with the Tewksbury Police Department system — difficulty calling up arrest and incident records — seemed to be just the usual system crankiness. No big deal. But it persisted, and a technician was called in. That was when the menacing message popped up on the screen, an explanation in the form of a ransom note: “Your personal files are encrypted,” it read. “File decryption costs ~ $500.” It continued: “If you really value your data, then we suggest you do not waste valuable time searching for other solutions because they do not exist.” Tewksbury had joined the list of police departments victimized by “ransomware,” an insidious form of Internet crime that is crippling computers worldwide. “My initial thoughts were we were infected by some sort of a virus,” Tewksbury Police Chief Timothy Sheehan recalled of the attack on Dec. 8. “Then we determined it was a little bit bigger than that. It was more like cyberterrorism.” The cyberattack on Tewksbury police proved so sophisticated that specialists from federal and state law enforcement agencies — plus two private Internet security firms — could not unscramble the corrupted files. After five days of desperate efforts to unlock it, Tewksbury police decided to pay the anonymous hacker the $500.
They waited a week before paying this? Guys, it was $500 dollars. I get that the hackers probably did this to a million people in an Office Space type “take a bunch of pennies” scam and you were trying to be “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” tough guys, but pump the brakes. You’re not Obama and $500 is way more “we don’t negotiate with petty thieves” than it is “we don’t negotiate with cyerterrorists.” If someone locked me out of my computer then demanded $500 I’d have my credit card out in a heartbeat. And I’m just a regular, poor idiot who wants to go on Twitter and PornHub. Who cares that you’re getting played? Just give them the money. It’s like an oil change at Jiffy Lube or ordering food delivery. You know you should be better, you know you’re paying too much money, but the alternative is a headache so just tell them to charge it. Or get better passwords. Mix in a capital letter and an exclamation point, then you can never get hacked.
PS – If anyone was considering doing this to us because we’d obviously pay, don’t even try it. Our software is so tight that it would never ever work.
