Fresno Council of Governments (COG) is hitting the news headlines on Google for becoming a victim of a ransomware attack in September this year. And the news is now out that the California based company which deals in businesses related to land use issues and transportation services was hit by the file encryption malware when its IT staff were taking part in the regular backup activity scheduled for the weekend.
The spokesperson of the Fresno COG has cleared the air that the company’s IT infrastructure did not fall prey to a phishing attack and was conducted by other means. At the same time, the spokesperson said that the hackers were demanding $8000 to free up the data from encryption. But they chose not to pay to the hackers as it encourages crime on a further note.
According to sources reporting to Cybersecurity Insiders, largely data related to plans, reports, studies, memos, correspondence, and staff records were impacted by the attack. And information related to finances, modeling, mapping remained unaffected by the cyber attack as such info holding server was never connected to the internet.
The attack related details were passed on to law enforcement authorities of FBI and Secret Service by late September and Robert Phipps, the deputy director says that the attack originated in Russia and was a Phobos Ransomware variant.
Note- Fresno County is an association of local governments formed within Fresno County, California.
