[2016-02-29] Melrose Police pay hackers in Bitcoin to recover encryption key

[crossabdd]

Hackers stole the encryption key to a software system at the Melrose Police Station on Thursday evening, compelling the department to pay the hackers one Bitcoin to regain control, Chief Michael Lyle told the Free Press on Monday.

The attack came in the form of an email sent to the entire department around 7 p.m. Thursday, Lyle said. One person opened the email, setting off a virus that voided the department’s control of a program it uses to log incident reports, known as TriTech.


http://melrose.wickedlocal.com/article/20160229/NEWS/160226126

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[aso118]

Hackers stole the encryption key to a software system at the Melrose Police Station on Thursday evening, compelling the department to pay the hackers one Bitcoin to regain control, Chief Michael Lyle told the Free Press on Monday.

The attack came in the form of an email sent to the entire department around 7 p.m. Thursday, Lyle said. One person opened the email, setting off a virus that voided the department’s control of a program it uses to log incident reports, known as TriTech.


http://melrose.wickedlocal.com/article/20160229/NEWS/160226126

One bitcoin is not much. The police got lucky.
It must have hurt their pride to pay up the ransom. 

[Bitware]

Why pay a ransom when you can simply reformat and reload the backed up data?

[1Referee]

Why pay a ransom when you can simply reformat and reload the backed up data?

What you say makes sense, but it may be because they probably only back up stuff once a day, if they do it at all. This just shows that they don't take the ICT part very serious. It surprises me that the hackers only demanded 1 Bitcoin.