[dated news] Police depts. paid bitcoin ransom fee

[Ele'ill]

to unencrypt their databases. dated (2014ish) but still amusing :lol:

I did a quick search on the forum and didn't immediately see anything this specific regarding bitcoins. This morning I was browsing around archived phreaking/radio news and articles and eventually ended up reading several news articles highlighting numerous (a lot of) police departments that had their entire databases encrypted with ransomware and were mostly inoperable. With the help of feds/dhs/private firms, they gave up and paid the ransom.


http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/police-chief-paying-the-bitcoin-ransom-was-the-last-resort/


http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2481356,00.asp

http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/police-pay-off-ransomware-operators-again/d/d-id/1319918

[RedWorker]

Probably they wouldn't pay $500 for a ransom if a person is kidnapped and they couldn't rescue them, leaving them to death. Yet they do pay it for a database. In any case both equally violate the same 'no negotiating with criminals' principle.