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Hackers ransomed Detroit

by on20 November 2014

y exclamation

Never rob a broke person

A team of hackers thought they were on to a money spinner when they discovered that the computer systems of Detroit’s local authority were insecure.

They hacked into the database, took it over, and demanded $800,000 of bitcoins for their trouble.

The only problem is that the hackers did not read the paper, Detroit was flat broke and the reason its computer system was easy to hack was that they did not have enough cash to upgrade it.

Detroit mayor Mike Duggan told the North American International Cyber Summit conference that the stolen database was not needed anyway so he told the hackers they could have it.

The mechanism of the attack, much less who might be behind it, is unclear. Duggan, who was elected as the chief exec of Motor City after a bankruptcy filing last year.

Duggan estimates security improvements and upgrades to obsolete systems are needed across the board, not least in his own where they still run a 10 year old version of Microsoft Office.

Michigan state governor Rick Snyder told summit delegates that the state's Cyber Civilian Corp (IT experts trained in security incident response) would be expanded to a dozen teams to deal with increasing threats, AP reports.

 

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