Large Lakewood Business Pays Ransom after Computer Network is Hacked

imageA large Lakewood-based business in Lakewood needed to pay hackers who hacked and took control of their computer network, the company told TLS.

The company CEO tells TLS the company received an email with an attached invoice, but not recognizing the vendor name, they clicked on the attachment to see the invoice and “Boom. It was game over,” the company said.

The attack – reported about on TLS a while back – is called ‘ransomware’, where hackers hold a computer network hostage until they pay to unlock it – for a pretty penny.

In this particular case, the hackers told the company they needed to pay $500 using bitcoins by a certain date, or the price would double (see attached photo).

“Be careful whaty you click on or download,” the victim said.

[TLS]

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15 COMMENTS

  1. ATT: COMPUTER TECHS:
    I am not a techie, but Lakewood has some really good & smart computer guys. Couldn’t this type of virus be disabled by a good computer tech ? This type of virus is not new. It sure is very scary hearing about this virus. I wonder if anyone out there knows if there is a fix to this virus or a cheaper solution than paying the ransom. Ransoms will only go up.

  2. @worrie: Unfortunately this is not a “virus” that can be “disabled” – it encrypts all (most) files on a computer with a “private key” and without access to the key it is virtually impossible to decrypt the files (assuming they used the proper crypto tools). This “virus” is similar to CryptoLocker which was widespread last year – and in CryptoLocker’s case the feds took control of a server that had the private keys that were used to encrypt the files. So unless the feds are able to track down the perpetrators there is little recourse other than paying the ransom.

  3. This is old news. Multi million dollar business from 3rd world countries. Best way to prevent is not to click on attachments from email addresses that u don’t know or look suspicious. And yes they can get onto your back ups as well.

  4. Any good IT company would have their customers files backed up onsite and offsite with multiple restoring posibilities and there would be no need to pay any ransoms.

  5. It behooves any business or user to question their tech guy or if you dont have one inquire if you are properly protected.Just today a customer of mine lost everything to this scam but because they had the proper back solution in place they didnt have to pay the ransom and got all their files back. Being that this malware will also encrypt your local backups you need to have a cloud backup like carbonite which stores 5 revisions of the same file. For example if your files from friday are encrypted and backed up the copy from Thursday will still be in the cloud untouched. One quick thing to try if you dont have a backup is right click on one of the bad folders click restore previous versions, if it shows previous versions your in luck (usually), click the restore button and it will replace what you have with a good copy. I always say OCD is not a good thing to have but having OCD about backups is necessary

  6. @sara-it is kinda funny, one reason though is to show you the proof is in the pudding. Boom is a good expression, as soon as you open that attachment everything goes boom. There’s very little your IT guys can do. Your computer is an expensive and vital important piece, it’s not a toy.

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