Ransomware?

[MoodyBlues]

On 60 Minutes they had a segment on ransomware. It said that 22 cities, counties, and police departments in Texas had just been hit, and also rattled off numerous other targets nationwide, including hospitals, whose computer systems were hijacked, encrypted, and held for ransom.

Of course, the first thing that came to *my* mind was, are these places really running mission-critical systems on window$? Followed by, have they never heard of off-site backups?!

I sat there in disbelief as they named place after place whose files were held hostage, their backups were also hit, and they paid the ransom so they could get back to work.

WTF?! I'm completely baffled. What's the matter with these people? Why are their systems so insecure, and why don't they use off-site backups--like I was 30 years ago? Is it safe to assume they're using M$ crap, or is this happening to *nix systems, too? The show didn't go into any of that. *scratching my head*

 

[Dannydet]

I believe they're all running windows environments, and I'm not surprised as my guess is that 99% of all companies I deal with are using it

 

[MoodyBlues]

I'm just...gobsmacked!

Yes, cloud backups are vulnerable, too, but at least they're separate from the main system; one could be hit, but maybe not the other.

But physically storing backups off-site--like I did 30 years ago--would help. At worst, the restored data would be outdated by hours or overnight. In my case, I ran a nightly backup every day before I left work, then took the disks home with me. Worst case scenario (this was a furniture store chain that closed at 9:00pm) would be data loss of a few hours. Beats the hell out of losing everything.

I cannot understand why, in 2019, people are so clueless, one, by using window$ and, two, not having proper backups that cannot be compromised.

 

[Dannydet]

I think companies are under the impression that they will never be a target.
Until it happens

 

[MoodyBlues]

I think companies are under the impression that they will never be a target.
Until it happens

You're probably right. But it's still puzzling when you consider how much publicity there is about hackers, spammers, scammers, ransomware, viruses, malware, etc.