(February 14 & 17, 2020)
Computer systems belonging to the Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council (UK) were infected with malware. The attack occurred on February 8, and as of February 26, were still “working with a reduced capacity”. The council has called in help from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). The council has not said what type of malware infected its IT systems.
Since then it has taken 19 days for the council to admit they are dealing with a ransomware attack.
This particularly nasty form of hack is unique and a growing problem for large targets like public authorities and companies.
Informing the public their council is being held to ransom is a key piece of information that many think people have a right to know.
It makes the situation far more serious as hackers are in control of computer systems and possibly sensitive data.
The only options are to pay the cyber criminals or rebuild from scratch by using offline backups, which is often far more costly.
