These hackers can hold a town hostage. And they want ransom — paid in bitcoin.

The best that officials in Plainfield, N.J., can tell, the hackers got in when someone was on the Internet researching grants, and soon employees in the mayor’s office were locked out of their own files. City officials scrambled to pull servers offline, but three had been compromised, leaving memos, city newsletters and other documents inaccessible.

The culprits said they would release the files, but only if the city coughed up about 650 euros, paid in bitcoin, Mayor Adrian Mapp said. When the city instead turned to law enforcement, he said, the hackers vanished. The computers in Plainfield had been infected with “ransomware” — a type of malware that cybersecurity experts and law enforcement officials say is proliferating across the United States and around the world. The malware gets into people’s computers, often because they click on a link or open an attachment in an email, then encrypts files or otherwise locks users out until they pay for the key. For the full article click here 

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