Darkreading.com reported that the City of New Orleans did not receive a Ransomware demand on December 13 and all data can be recovered, but “…officials took roughly 4,000 computers offline and are in the process of cleaning them up and investigating them. New Orleans’ Fire Department, Police Department, and Emergency Medical Services are running.” The December 20, 2019 report entitled “New Orleans to Boost Cyber Insurance to $10M Post-Ransomware” included these comments:

The New Orleans attack reportedly started with a phishing email. 

It’s believed the Ryuk strain of ransomware was used in this attack, Bleeping Computer reports, citing files uploaded to VirusTotal. 

The day after the incident, memory dumps of suspicious files were uploaded containing several references to both Ryuk and the city of New Orleans.

This attack arrived in the midst of a ransomware crisis for the United States, where 11 new school districts have been targeted since October, and municipalities including New Orleans and Pensacola are recovering from attacks. 

A total of 72 US school districts or educational institutions have suffered ransomware campaigns. Up to 1,040 schools may have been hit.

Do you $10million in Cyber Insurance will be sufficient for NOLA in the future?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *