Within the same week in June 2019, two Florida towns fell victim to ransomware and paid a little over $1 million to hackers to retrieve their data and regain control of their servers.
“I would’ve never dreamed this could’ve happened, especially in a small town like this,” said the mayor of Lake City, one of the two Florida towns victimized by ransomware.
Hackers have the public sector in their sights
The Florida towns are the latest victims in a string of ransomware attacks on US governments. Since 2013, there have been 169 successful ransomware attacks on state and local US governments, according to figures collated by threat intelligence company Recorded Future.