By 
The other day, Riviera Beach City agreed to pay $600,000 in ransom; now after less than a week, another city in Florida chose to do the same to retrieve its data after a ransomware attack.
The victim is Lake City, Florida, that during an emergency meeting of the city council held on Monday, voted to pay a ransom demand of 42 bitcoins, worth nearly $500,000. Lake City is a small city in Florida with a population of 65,000 that was hit by ransomware earlier on June 10.
“On Monday June 10th, 2019, the City of Lake City was targeted by a malware attack known as ‘Triple Threat.’” states the press release published by the city. “This ransomware program combines three different methods of attack to target network systems. As a result of this attack, many City systems are currently out of order. City personnel are working diligently to establish alternate methods of providing city services.”
Right now, all City of Lake City email systems are out of order, such as most land-linephones. Other City networks are presently incapacitated as protective measure and the IT staff as remote the Public Safety networks.
In a few minutes after the early infection, the ransomware bargained almost all the City computer systems, excluding the systems operated by the police and fire departments that are hosted on a separate network. Most City departments are operating using Emergency Operations cell phones.
The activities of the small city have been blocked for nearly two weeks because of the ransomware attack. Crooks made a request of a ransom a week after the initial infection, they contacted the Lake City’s insurance provider, the League of Cities, which negotiated a payment of 42 bitcoins.
The city’s IT staff is now working to restore operations after receiving the key to decrypt its data.
In July 2018, another Palm Beach suburb, Palm Springs, decided to pay a ransom, but it was not able to totally recover all its data.
