An international ransomware organisation is threatening this week to auction off 1000s of files it claims to have stolen from the US city of Columbus, Ohio.
“It has become a mob-style run enterprise,” Trent Milliron, CEO of Kloud9 IT, a cyber security company which has offices in Columbus & also in the Cleveland area explained.
6 Terabytes
A hacker group claiming to be Rhysida, based overseas, claimed it stole more than 6 terabytes of data from the city & is now threatening to sell the information for 30 bitcoin, which is a little less than $2m, if a ransom is not paid.
Information posted on the Dark Web by Rhysida claims to have passwords, internal logins, & servers with emergency server applications. Buyers also promised full instructions for databases.
“I could tell just by looking, there is a lot of data here,” Milliron revealed after he reviewed screenshots ABC 6 provided to him of data, Rhysida is believed to have posted on the dark web to prove it is responsible for the breach.
Video Data from Cameras
“I can see they got far into the system & basically stole all pertinent information,” Milliron stated. “There looks like a lot of video data from cameras & things like that.”
The city commented that it was able to thwart a larger data grab when it disconnected from the web after being alerted to the cyber hack. Milliron observed that cyber thieves were probably phishing inside servers for a while.
“More than likely, when they got access to this network, they were probably in this network for months or even years,” he observed. “Oddly, when hackers get access to a system, they usually hang around before doing anything.”
No Ransom Demand
When TV station ABC 6 talked in-person with Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, he revealed that there had not been a demand for a ransom. There was not a response days later, when we e-mailed City Hall, asking if the city planned to pay a ransom.
City of Columbus workers were notified last week they would be offered a series of identity theft prevention services, including credit monitoring for 2 years.
Workers expected to receive information on signing up for the credit monitoring this week.
