We live in a world that’s dominated by all sorts of evildoers such as trolls and hackers. This means that the good people who use the internet have always looked up to someone who will stand up to the online evil doers by refusing to give in to their demands. The government of a county found in North Carolina known as Mecklenburg County has refused to back down when confronted by hackers. Mecklenburg County has big cities such as Charlotte. The county released a statement on Tuesday saying that it had been hacked. The county further said that the hackers were demanding a ransom of $23,000. Through its official Twitter account, the county said that the hackers had seized control of its computer systems. Mecklenburg County manager Dena R. Diorio spoke about the issue to news reporters. He said that the county had invested in backup data systems.
He further said that he was confident that they had the necessary manpower and resources to take care of the situation. He told the affected that the process would take time. He said that the situation would be resolved through hard work and patience. After some few hours, the most populous county in the state announced that some services had returned to normal. The county asked the residents to be patient as most of its staff was working using the paper process due to lack of the internet. Ransomware has become a common thing today. A few months ago, millions of computers were subjected to a ransomware attack. The attack touched computers located in over 70 nations, and the attack was carried out using a program that had been developed by the National Security Agency. The hackers managed to acquire the software through hacking and the attack took place in May.
A month later, tens of thousands of computers were hit by another attack. However, the attack only affected computers located in 64 countries. In most of the cases, the hackers request their ransom to be paid in the form of Bitcoin. For starters, Bitcoin is an online cryptocurrency that has become popular and expensive in the last 12 months. Less than a month ago, Uber released a statement confirming that they had parted with $100,000 that was paid to hackers. According to local stations in the state, they reported that the hackers are demanding for two Bitcoins which are equivalent to $23,000. The identity of the hackers remains unknown
Dil Bole Oberoi
