AngryMilkcrates
End of an Era
- Jun 4, 2016
- 16,345
- 26,021
So an update, the Irish government has refused to pay the ransom (which I think is the right call). The hackers gave up a decryption key last week so our health system is going to be able to retrieve all the data but the hackers have a copy of everything. They gave a deadline of last night (Sunday) to be paid or they were going to dump/sell all the data on the dark web come Monday. The deadline has come and gone so everyone is just waiting now to see what appears.
All Irish citizens have been warned about possible scams and/or blackmailing over the coming months and years as our data will most likely get sold and passed between different criminal groups. Main worries regarding blackmailing are for people who have phycological diagnosis or things like STI's etc... things that maybe they don't want other people in their lives to know about.
Supposedly the whole thing started when some poor innocent nurses computer started "acting funny" and when a help window suddenly appeared she clinked on the link giving them remote access to the system.
Sadly its not the nurses fault. She should not have to know about IT phishing like that for her job. The network IT people needed to protect against that. That means updated Operating Systems with full patching and Virus safeguards. Hard to blame IT nowadays as they mostly are not given the budget and time to protect these systems sufficiently.