Ransomware has no shortage of cautionary tales and wakeup calls from the past decade. But for local governments, this past year has been a particularly brutal reminder of the threat. Following a 2018 attack that paralyzed the City of Atlanta for weeks, more than half a dozen cities and public services across the country have fallen to ransomware so far in 2019, on a near-monthly basis; the Administrative Office of the Georgia Courts became the latest victim on Saturday, when an attack knocked its systems offline.
The string of attacks on municipalities may seem like a new pattern. But it’s unclear how many of them, if any, were perpetrated by the same actors. And law enforcement officials emphasize that the spate of attacks actually fits into a broader, ever-growing trend of ransomware attacks that spans numerous industry sectors.
"We are seeing an increase in targeted ransomware attacks; however, we do not have enough data to indicate one industry or sector is being targeted more than another," the FBI told WIRED in a statement. "Cyber criminals are opportunistic. They will monetize any network to the fullest extent."
Incident responders agree with this assessment and note that attackers will capitalize on any technique that sees some success, to infect as many targets as possible and maximize the possibility of return.
Lily Hay Newman covers information security, digital privacy, and hacking fo ..
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