For about a month, the US capital Baltimore has been struggling with a cyberattack. There have already been millions of dollars in costs and the case is not yet over. In early May, various computer systems were hijacked by the local authorities, then a hacker reported to the city administration.
The ransom demand: 13 Bitcoins, converted currently 91,500 euros, to decrypt the systems and thus release again for the everyday life of the authorities. If the payment did not come in until June 7, the data would be deleted, the extortionist threatened.
But Mayor Bernard „Jack“ Young declined to pay the comparatively small amount. A momentous decision that cost the city in the state of Maryland expensive. In late May, the city council provided the first estimate of the cost of the hacker attack. More than $ 18 million is the loss of revenue due to paralyzed servers and system recovery costs, the Baltimore Sun reported. Now it is discussed in the US, whether the ransom should not have been better paid.
Two thirds of the companies pay ransom
„Nobody likes giving in to blackmail, but cities like Baltimore may not have much choice,“ Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter wrote in his Bloomberg column. If you do not have your IT security under control, you will always be short of experienced hackers, concludes the commentary.
It also shows, according to Carter, that companies have now largely accepted cyber-attack costs as a form of business expense. According to a study by IBM, more than two-thirds of companies would pay ransoms to get their data back.
