NEW YORK (Sputnik) — State officials have paid hackers hundreds of dollars in ransom money in order to retrieve stolen data, the New York Comptroller’s Office said in a report issued on Friday.
“These payments were made on January 10, 2014 in the amount of $300 and on May 9, 2014, in the amount of $500,” the report stated.
The payments were made to a group of unidentified hackers who successfully froze New York government computers by installing a malicious program to servers belonging to the Village of Iona, which is located approximately 200 miles north of New York City.
The program then directed the state employees to make a ransom payment to obtain the keys needed to decrypt the data, the report added.
“These incidents should be a wake-up call to local government officials around the state,” New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a statement. “While the dollar amounts were small and no vital information was disclosed, this attack shows how the lack of basic IT safeguards can potentially cost taxpayers and cripple the day-to-day operations of municipalities or school districts.”
In January 2015, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a memo citing that ransomware threats, or malware that requires users to pay ransoms in order to retrieve data, are on the rise.
“Ransomware has been around for several years, but there’s been a definite uptick lately in its use by cyber criminals,” the FBI noted.
More than 40 percent of ransomware attacks during the first quarter of 2012 targeted computers in the United States, according to statistics portal Statista.
The New York State Comptroller’s Office is the State’s chief fiscal officer who ensures that State and local government use taxpayer money effectively and efficiently, according to the office’s website.
