Ransomware gang wanted $40 million in Florida schools cyberattack

Ransomware gang wanted $40 million in Florida schools cyberattack


Fueled by large payments from victims, ransomware gangs have started to demand ridiculous ransoms from organizations that can not afford to pay them. An example of this is a recently revealed ransomware attack on the Broward County Public Schools district where threat actors demanded a $40,000,000 payment.


According to the Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) website, the school system is the sixth-largest in the USA, with nearly 261,000 students and approximately 110,000 adult students in 241 schools, centers, and technical colleges, and 92 charter schools.


Last month, Florida's Broward County Public Schools had to shut down their IT systems after suffering what was reported as a cyberattack. Since then, the school system has not disclosed any further information regarding the attack.


As first reported by databreaches.net, this week, a ransomware gang known as Conti has claimed responsibility for the attack. After negotiations failed, the threat actors published alleged screenshots of the ransom negotiation from Broward County Public Schools' attack.


These screenshots revealed that the threat actors initially demanded a $40,000,000 ransom from the district, which left the BCPS representative shocked that the threat actors thought they could afford that much money.


This is illustrated in a snippet of the conversation between a BCPS representative and the Conti gang, shown below.



Alleged ransomware negotiations published by Conti

According to the screenshots of the negotiation process, the ransom was ultimately lowered to $10 million, but it was still far more than the $500,000 the school district was willing to pay. This led to the end of the negotiations and the screenshots being posted.


From the numerous ransomware negotiations seen by BleepingComputer, ransomware gangs always pride themselves on researching a vi ..

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