KGUN 9s Heidi Alagha will have much more on the cyber attack on TUSD tonight at 5 and 6 p.m.
TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Ransomware, as the name implies, is a digital way of holding your information hostage.
In a situation involving ransomware, the person or persons involved gain access to your computer whether through hacking or by the user himself allowing the bad actors into his system.
For example: By clicking a pop-up or visiting a shady website you can allow those bad actors a way to tunnel into your system — then spread their branches and get hold of nearly everything.
We live in a society where access to your information is only a click away and many companies will sell that information to target ads at you. That's an entirely different story, but the same concept. When a ransomware attack is initiated your files are encrypted by the bad actors. That means you have no access to any of them until you have some means of decryption.
Think of the generic 'bad movie' concept of a guy getting poisoned, and the villain having the only antidote. In the case of ransomware? To get that antidote, the hackers ask that you pay up. And if you don't, not only can your system be "bricked" (meaning it stops working) but that information might also be sold to other malicious entities or leaked somewhere.
While these attacks are dominating headlines across the nation in recent months and years, ransomware has existed since the 1980's. It was called the AIDS Trojan and was handed out on floppy disc by a biologist to members of the ransomware works cyber attacks hitting schools tucson
