Since May 7th, the city of Baltimore has been the victim of a ransomware attack that has blocked most public services, such as those related to buying and selling real estate, due to the fact that the files have been encrypted.
The virus that has hit the city belongs to the category of ransomware, in this case nicknamed Robbinhood: the malware encrypts all the data of the victim and requires a ransom in bitcoin (BTC). The ransomware asks for 3 bitcoins to unlock the single machine or 13 bitcoins for the whole system.
Unfortunately, this ransomware caused the partial paralysis of the main services of the city of Baltimore, although fortunately the emergency services were not affected.
Furthermore, the damage is significant because there are not enough backup copies to restore all the databases, despite the fact that the city had allocated $2 million in 2019 to upgrade their backup systems.
It’s not clear how this virus could have gotten into government computers, but the FBI is investigating a Twitter user who had published sensitive data about the credentials of those systems.
The Mayor of the city, Bernard Young, is not going to pay the 13 bitcoins ransom (currently about $76,000), not least because there is always the risk that despite the payment hackers will not unlock the data.
