Florida City Suffers Major Cyberattack, Insurer Covers Most Of Bitcoin Ransom

A city in Florida has been the target of a massive cyberattack that disabled many of the municipality’s systems, forcing city leaders to pay off a hefty ransom to free the computers.

Ransomware crippled the systems of Lake City in North Florida on June 10.

While the city’s IT staff managed to disconnect the impacted systems within minutes of detecting the attack, the ransomware managed to infect nearly all of the city’s systems. Fortunately, the city’s police and fire departments were unaffected by the tack, since they ran on a separate network.

However, the attack left Lake City’s systems disabled for almost two weeks. During this time, city staff worked with the FBI and an outside security consultant to restore capabilities such as phone lines, email, and online utility payments.