Ransomware Cripples Alaskan Borough – Thankfully Employees Think Outside the Box
The Alaskan borough of Matanuska-Susitna, reported almost all of its 500 desktop computers and 120 of its servers were affected by a ransomware attack just days ago. The unknown ransomware variant was found on July 24th, spreading throughout the network. Although officials attempted to minimize damages, various systems were impacted, including their email servers, internal systems, and disaster recovery servers. In addition, employees were not able to use their door entry cards, as they are associated with the infected systems.
As a means to keep operations moving forward, employees are now using typewriters to carry out daily tasks. At this time, it is unclear how long it will take to get systems back to fully operational. However, Eric Wyatt, the borough’s IT director made the following statement to The Telegraph,
“Though it initially appeared that our data was a complete loss, we have recently recovered data from the shared drives. Email does appear to be completely unrecoverable.”
It also should be noted a portion of the restored systems has reverted to a recovery point from approximately one year ago. Although the information stored in the meantime remains encrypted.
Other Ransomware Attacks
For a list of ransomware attacks that have already taken place in 2018, you may click here. We have also created a map, see below, of the ransomware attacks that have taken place in the U.S.
