Officials based out of the City of Del Rio, Texas, were forced to abandon all electronic services and go back to the days of pen and paper after a ransomware attack rendered City Hall servers useless.

The city was struck by the ransomware last Thursday, January 10, and the City’s M.I.S. (Management Information Services) Department quickly worked to isolate the ransomware by disabling the internet across all city departments and not allowing employees to log into government systems, leaving all transactions at City Hall to be done manually with paper.

Del Rio’s City Hall Public Relations Manager, Victoria Vargas, explained that the City turned off 30-45 of its computers following the detection of the ransomware. No details have been provided regarding who is behind the attack, the ransomware strains identity, or whether or not any personal data has been compromised.

However, Vargas did reveal that the malware was somewhat unusual, as the ransom note that posted to the City’s PCs contained a phone number to contact the attackers and pay the ransom fee.

The City published a press release on its website stating, “The City is diligently working on finding the best solution to resolve this situation and restore the system. We ask the public to be patient with us as we may be slower in processing requests at this time.”

The City is currently working with the Secret Service to attempt to determine who is responsible for the attack.

This is not the first time a local government has been taken offline by a ransomware attack. In March 2018, the City of Atlanta’s computer network was hit by a major ransomware attack that left the city scrambling to get operations back up and running for over a month. The incident left several internal and customer-facing applications disabled and left residents unable to pay bills or access court information.

Ransomware Kit

NNT has developed a custom Ransomware Attack Remediation Kit to help organizations defend themselves against ransomware attacks. Request to download your free mitigation kit today and receive a comprehensive set of system hardening templates that will ensure all your systems retain the most appropriate checks designed to hardened your IT environment and protect you from ransomware. 

Help is at Hand: The NNT Ransomware Mitigation Kit

NNT, in conjunction with The Center for Internet Security (CIS), provides a comprehensive suite of system hardening templates based on absolute best practices.

These can be leveraged to ensure all of your systems (workstations included) retain the most appropriate checks designed to harden your environment and protect from Ransomware.

NNT’s is an accredited CIS member and as such we are able to automate and control the provision of all relevant hardening standards including your Microsoft Applications. Within minutes, a full vulnerability assessment can be performed against your user workstation platforms and the applications being used. Full remediation guidance is provided to make corrective action a straightforward task.

NNT can also provide a Ransomware Mitigation Kit, comprising the necessary automated vulnerability checks and also the Group Policy/Puppet templates to automatically fix any weaknesses identified.

Best of all, these layers of defense against RansomWare are also backed up with the fastest-available, real-time system integrity and change control detection technology to further ensure that, if the unthinkable happens and you do fall victim to an attack, any suspicious changes or activity is immediately brought to your attention before major damage can be perpetrated.

Request The FREE NNT Ransomware Mitigation Kit

 

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