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> A recent ransomware attack on Brooks County’s Justice of the Peace and district courts, and finance department, cost it more than $37,000. > “We had determin

> A recent ransomware attack on Brooks County’s Justice of the Peace and district courts, and finance department, cost it more than $37,000. > “We had determined if we didn’t, then it would take us anywhere from six months to a year to reconstruct our software program,” Ramos said. How much would it have cost for 6-12 months of engineer time plus the court system slowing to a crawl in the meantime? Thank god these hackers don't know how to negotiate.

deleted 4y ago
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_fs 4y ago
> Thank god these hackers don't know how to negotiate. I think that's a feature, not a bug. They have exemplified that if they get paid, you get your data back. No negotiating, no games, just a hard time limit with consequences and a relatively low payout cost to avoid them.
- sour-taste 4y ago
  but... they did negotiate, from 93,000 to 37,000
- jxramos 4y ago
  this is interesting, the cost of doing business ala a black hat bug bounty effectively.
dmix 4y ago
This is some tiny town, not surprised it was that low really. Someone here could have an idea how much it might cost. They said it was their financial software and it was the only one boy backed up. Which means it’s probably ancient. Idk much about municipal software. Buying new software is one thing you could price out. Losing historical financial data is the one that’s tricky to price.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  Knowing the state of municipalities in Texas, it was probably some legacy Tyler Technologies database. Maybe even one of the versions that still used COBOL for backend storage. Source: worked for a Texas municipality in a previous career life, but definitely not Brooks County
  - nonameiguess 4y ago
    That name is giving me nightmares. I divorced in a Texas county I no longer live in, and at some point, some agency would not accept the copy of the divorce decree I had from the original action because it said "Copy - Original signed by judge" on the last page, and they wanted something with that signature. I ended up in a nightmare loop trying to find how to request records, where I could look up my case and see the link, but not use it without registering, but if I registered and logged in, my case no longer showed up in their search at all, making it so I could see my case record was clearly there, but I had no way to retrieve it.

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[deleted]

_fs 4y ago

> Thank god these hackers don't know how to negotiate. I think that's a feature, not a bug. They have exemplified that if they get paid, you get your data back. No negotiating, no games, just a hard time limit with consequences and a relatively low payout cost to avoid them.

sour-taste 4y ago
but... they did negotiate, from 93,000 to 37,000
jxramos 4y ago
this is interesting, the cost of doing business ala a black hat bug bounty effectively.

dmix 4y ago

This is some tiny town, not surprised it was that low really. Someone here could have an idea how much it might cost. They said it was their financial software and it was the only one boy backed up. Which means it’s probably ancient. Idk much about municipal software. Buying new software is one thing you could price out. Losing historical financial data is the one that’s tricky to price.

SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
Knowing the state of municipalities in Texas, it was probably some legacy Tyler Technologies database. Maybe even one of the versions that still used COBOL for backend storage. Source: worked for a Texas municipality in a previous career life, but definitely not Brooks County
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  That name is giving me nightmares. I divorced in a Texas county I no longer live in, and at some point, some agency would not accept the copy of the divorce decree I had from the original action because it said "Copy - Original signed by judge" on the last page, and they wanted something with that signature. I ended up in a nightmare loop trying to find how to request records, where I could look up my case and see the link, but not use it without registering, but if I registered and logged in, my case no longer showed up in their search at all, making it so I could see my case record was clearly there, but I had no way to retrieve it.