Lake City, Florida Becomes Latest Ransomware Victim

The City of Lake City Became Riddled with Ransomware

Update: The city has confirmed, they have paid the $460,000 ransom demand in an attempt to restore their email systems that have been down for over two weeks.

This week has been a tough one for public municipalities in the war against ransomware. Earlier this week, news broke of two Texas towns being hit with ransomware, and now, the city of Lake City, Florida has become the latest target.

Lake City was infected with an unknown ransomware variant earlier this week, which city officials have deemed a “triple threat”. Once the attack was executed, it infiltrated the city’s networks and rendered their email systems, landlines and payment processing systems useless. Fortunately, emergency systems went unscathed and remain fully operational.

While the IT department and a third-party consulting firm work to remediate the infection, city offices are open and functioning as best they can. Employees are doing what they can with a basic pen and paper and will have to electronically file everything they’ve done once the systems are up and running again.

Other Ransomware Attacks

For a list of ransomware attacks that have already taken place in 2019, you may click here. We have also created a map, see below, of the ransomware attacks that have taken place in the U.S.