From small towns such as Lake City, Florida, to large metropolises such as Baltimore, Maryland, municipalities have become a major target for ransomware groups. Now, more than 1,400 US mayors have taken a stance against paying out ransoms to the cybercriminals that target their systems and data.
In a resolution signed at the US Conference of Mayors earlier this month, the top elected officials of every city of more than 30,000 citizens committed to not paying ransoms to the cybercriminals that encrypt data and demand payment to unlock the information. The resolution came just days after Lake City, a town of 12,000, paid $460,000 and weeks after Riviera Beach, Florida, a town of 35,000, paid $600,0000 to regain access to their respective systems.
In the resolution, the US Conference of Mayors estimated that at least 170 county, city and state governments had suffered a ransomware attack since 2013, with 22 of those attacks occurring just this year.
"[P]aying ransomware attackers encourages continued attacks on other government systems, as perpetrators financially benefit [and] the United States Conference of Mayors has a vested interest in de-incentivizing these attacks to prevent further harm," the group said in its resolution to refuse to pay ransoms.
The pledge to not pay comes as municipalities are being explicitly targeted by ransomware gangs. The list of towns and cities suffering from ransomware include large metropolises, such as Baltimore and Atlanta, and small towns, such as Lake City and West Haven, Connecticut.
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