While the world is mourning over the fire accident which gutted the renowned Paris monument Notre Dame to ashes, the news is out that hackers targeted the Stratford City hall with a ransomware attack on Sunday last week.
Dan Mathieson, the Stratford City Mayor confirmed that the cyber crooks have attacked the database of the city hall last week.
However, he disclosed that the prima facie launched by law enforcement has found no evidence of data theft or migration.
A detailed investigation will be conducted from Tuesday this week in which info related to who launched the attack and how; will be probed. The city police of Stratford, Ontario, Canada have launched a separate inquiry on this incident as OPP cybercrime unit and RCMP have been pressed into service since Monday to investigate the ransomware attack.
Note- Ransomware is a kind of malware which fraudulently hits a database and then blocks data access with high-end encryption until a ransom is paid in bitcoins or Monero to hackers. The law enforcement agencies especially, US FBI is discouraging the victims from paying the ransom to criminals as it not only helps in encouraging crime but also doesn’t offer any guarantee that the cyber crooks will turn up with the decryption key as soon as they receive the payment without the chance of demanding more.
Since the entire IT infrastructure was impacted with the ransomware, residents are being asked to visit the city hall on a manual note in order to seek any services. Mayor Mathienson is confident that the email system and online forums will be revived by this weekend as other issues are likely to be sorted out by the end of next week.
