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Ransomware Infection Cripples UK City for Six Days

Ransomware infection on Lincolnshire City Council computers brings down several local city departments

Feb 1, 2016 15:18 GMT  ·  By
Lincolnshire City Council shuts down IT network following ransomware infection
   Lincolnshire City Council shuts down IT network following ransomware infection

It took six days for Lincolnshire city officials to resume normal activities after a ransomware infection locked up City Council computers last Tuesday, January 26, 2016.

Initial reports from local newspaper The Lincolnite said that the ransomware authors were requesting payment of £1 million ($1.43 million) to unlock the affected computers.

The newspaper did correct its reporting four days later after city officials had a chance to investigate the issue in depth, and said that the ransomware's authors were only asking for the equivalent of $500 in Bitcoin.

Ransomware infections affects several local services

The ransomware, which arrived via spam email, locked up several computers and the adjacent data, causing outages in various local services that were using it.

The Lincolnshire services that had to alter their normal operations include the Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue Department, the CallConnect rural bus service, public libraries, and social service workers who had to return to filling in forms by hand.

As soon as the infection was detected, City Council officials called local police officers to help with the investigation. The IT network was also taken offline to prevent further damage, and the affected computers were isolated.

Services were restored to normal this morning

This past Sunday, city officials announced that their IT system would be brought online this Monday morning.

Officials did not say which ransomware strain infected Lincolnshire City Council computers, but they specifically said it was not CryptoLocker, a famous crypto-ransomware that was one of 2014’s most spread ransomware families.

A similar incident happened in India, where the LeChiffre ransomware infected hundreds of computers in the IT networks of three banks and a pharmaceutical company, encrypting files and requesting 1 Bitcoin per computer, amounting for a total ransom that ran into millions of dollars.

Emsisoft's Fabian Wosar cracked the ransomware's encryption algorithm a few days later and created a decrypter that allowed victims to recover their encrypted files for free.