Ransomware, CyberAttacks Continue to hit the USA – 911 system Down, Boeing Attack & Major Data Breach

Cyberattacks continue to hit the USA cities, companies and businesses. Hackers are targeting different cities in the USA and demanding money in exchange for securing sensitive data.

Currently, attacks in Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver, and the operations of Boeing shook not just the USA but the whole world.

On March 22nd Atlanta computer systems were breached by a ransomware attack. The important city data was locked through an encrypted wall. It will unlock only if the hackers were paid $51000 in Bitcoin cryptocurrency. Six days have passed and the computer systems are still down.

On paying the payment asked by hackers, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said, “ Everything is up for discussion.”

On the website page of the city, it was written, “ Our cross-functional incident response team is looking into this matter and working around-the-clock. It would be inappropriate to speculate on when this matter will be fixed, but we are committed to the resolution.”

The hackers blackmailed that if the money is not paid till the deadline issued, all the sensitive data will be wiped out.

Similarly on 911 shut down in Baltimore. Chief information officer Frank Johnson said, “We were able to successfully isolate the threat and ensure that no harm was done to other servers or systems across the city’s network.”

The Baltimore officials confirmed that the city’s 911 system was targeted by cyber attackers. Frank Johnson, chief information officer in the Mayor’s Office of Information Technology admitted that the system was hacked by “ransomware perpetrators”.

He added, “We were able to successfully isolate the threat and ensure that no harm was done to other servers or systems across the city’s network.”

Then on Wednesday the biggest airline in the world, Boeing was hit by a cyberattack. Few machines of the company were attacked, while the production equipment remained safe.

Linda Mills, head of communications for Boeing Commercial Airplanes said, “We’ve done a final assessment. The vulnerability was limited to a few machines. We deployed software patches. There was no interruption to the 777 jet program or any of our programs.”

Another incident took place in Denver where important websites including denvergov.org and pocketgov.org and online services went down. David McCurdy, chief technology officer, said the department had “no intention of paying ransomware,” as the damage was controlled.

2017 was a bad year for cyber attacks. British Parliament was hit by a cyber attack, a new bad rabbit named cyber attack hit Russia and Ukraine even the Wannacry Ransomware attack entered Pakistan after damaging 300000 computers in 150 countries.