Fortunately, Follet identified the issue and immediately took actions to address the vulnerability. But those expenses did not include the demanded payoff. Ransomware hit systems used by the city of Atlanta's local services, causing outages on customer facing applications, including some that customers may use to pay bills or access court-related information. It was initially thought that the attacks were primarily being conducted on healthcare organizations, educational institutions, and government agencies, although the recent analysis has shown the private sector has attracted the majority of attacks. The same day the New Jersey indictment was filed, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control placed two bitcoin addresses on its sanctions list for the first time in history. Failure to Terminate Former Employee’s Access Rights Results in $202,000 HIPAA Fine for New Haven, CT, Webinar 11/12 | Patient Survey Insights for Transforming Telehealth, TigerConnect Survey Confirms Widespread Support for Telehealth Among Providers and Patients, Majority of Microsoft 365 Admins Have Not Enabled Multi-Factor Authentication, Sky Lakes Medical Center and St. Lawrence Health System Attacked with Ransomware. “The defendants in this case developed and deployed the SamSam Ransomware in order to hold public and private entities hostage and then extort money from them,” said U.S. Attorney Carpenito. In addition, Trend Micro XGen™ security provides a cross-generational blend of threat defense techniques against a full range of threats for data centers, cloud environments, networks, and endpoints. The suspects have previously been charged in a similar scheme in New Jersey. Sophos notes that the nature of SamSam ransomware attacks mean that simply backing up files is not enough to ensure a quick recovery. Press Ctrl+A to select all. It is also wise to change RDP connections from the standard TCP/3389 port and it is similarly advisable not to have RDP connections public-facing to the internet. Add this infographic to your site:1. A sophisticated ransomware attack has left the city of Atlanta crippled and cyber-security experts racing to figure out how it happened. Officials said the two made updates to the malware twice in 2017. ", The indictment alleges the men's hacking and extortion scheme is part of a "continuing trend of cyber criminal activity emanating from Iran." The attacks tend to take place at night when there is less chance of them being detected and blocked. The SamSam ransomware attack on the City of Atlanta was initially expected to cost around $6 million to resolve: Substantially more than the $51,000 ransom demand that was issued. Access to RDP needs to be restricted and remote connections should ideally only be made through VPNs, which also need to be kept up to date. The SamSam ransomware attack on the City of Atlanta was initially expected to cost around $6 million to resolve: Substantially more than the $51,000 ransom demand that was issued. In court documents, the Justice Department claims that Savandi and Mansouri have collected more than $6 million in ransom payments since they first launched SamSam in December 2015. Even if Atlanta won’t pay, the hackers behind the SamSam ransomware are still running a tidy operation — collecting nearly $850,000 since their first attack in late 2015, according to analyses of the SamSam group’s bitcoin wallet. According to the news report, the attack resembles the work of SAMSAM, a ransomware family that infected US healthcare facilities in 2016. Copyright © 2014-2020 HIPAA Journal. The effects of the "SamSam" ransomware attack against Atlanta's government were much worse than it seemed at first glance. If RDP is not required it should be disabled. However, city officials now believe the final cost could be around $11 million higher, according to a “confidential and privileged” document obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Cancel Any Time. Smart, optimized, and connected, XGen™ powers Trend Micro’s suite of security solutions: Hybrid Cloud Security, User Protection, and Network Defense. Click on the box below. Healthcare organizations are obliged to report the attacks under HIPAA Rules, which is why it seemed like they were extensively targeted. Read about Atlanta's SamSam attack. A ransomware UI screenshot provided by an Atlanta city employee showed that attackers demanded a ransom of US$6,800 to unlock one computer, or $51,000 for all the decrypt keys needed to restore access to all the affected systems. Breach News The two men face federal charges of infecting Atlanta's computers with their SamSam ransomware. As with the City of Atlanta, the ransom was not paid. 26% of all attacks have been on healthcare firms. How Should You Respond to an Accidental HIPAA Violation? The suspects have previously been charged in a similar scheme in New Jersey. With ransom demands of around $50,000 issued for each infection, and an average of $187,500 earned each month, it is unlikely that the attacks will stop any time soon. But as NPR's Ryan Lucas reported, such federal charges are part of "a strategy by the U.S. government to generate detailed, legally admissible cases against foreign cyber-attackers even though they're unlikely to see the inside of a U.S. After becoming infected, municipal court computers were unable to pull up cases; residents were blocked from paying bills online; and police officers were forced to revert to writing reports and booking inmates by hand. In the end, the attack caused the city "to incur substantial expenses" and inflicted "millions of dollars in losses," Pak's office said. The charges against Savandi and Mansouri are unlikely to lead to a trial of either of the men. Regulatory Changes HIPAA Journal's goal is to assist HIPAA-covered entities achieve and maintain compliance with state and federal regulations governing the use, storage and disclosure of PHI and PII. What are the HIPAA Breach Notification Requirements? SamSam ransomware infections do not occur via spam or phishing emails, instead companies are attacked through the exploitation of vulnerabilities and recently through brute force attacks on remote desktop protocol connections. Their first alleged target was a business in Mercer County, N.J., but the duo quickly moved on to prey on software vulnerabilities within major public entities, including the cities of Atlanta and Newark, N.J., the Port of San Diego, the Colorado Department of Transportation, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles and the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, among many others. In that case, the pair were charged with six counts of computer hacking and fraud by U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Wednesday's charges against Savandi and Mansouri — both believed to reside in Iran — follow a federal grand jury indictment in New Jersey that was unsealed last week. "According to the indictment, the hackers infiltrated computer systems in 10 states and Canada and then demanded payment. The figures come from Sophos, which has recently teamed up with a leading cryptocurrency tracking firm, to investigate the attacks. The most high-profile incident, however, was another Indiana-based hospital — Hancock Health —for its decision to pay a $55,000 ransom in exchange for the decrypt keys needed to resume its operations as soon as possible. On average, one SamSam ransomware attack is conducted a day and the attacks have a high success rate. A federal grand jury in Atlanta on Wednesday became the latest to indict two Iranian nationals on charges of creating and deploying the "SamSam" ransomware that attacked vital city computer systems earlier this year in an attempt to extort tens of thousands of dollars from the local government. Pak's office alleges it was Savandi and Mansouri who held 3,789 of the city's computers hostage, demanding a six bitcoin ransom payment — valued at about $51,000 at the time — in exchange for delivering an encryption key that would restore access to the data. The attack has highlighted the importance of cyber-security on both an individual and institutional level as poor defenses embolden criminal hacker groups. Sophos believes the attacks are the work of a single individual. The Follet’s Destiny software tracks school library assets and is used in K-12 schools in the US and across the globe. Access is gained to the network and the attacker manually moves laterally using standard administration tools rather than NSA exploits. Receive weekly HIPAA news directly via email, HIPAA News The suspects have previously been charged in a similar scheme in New Jersey. The city payroll application remains unaffected as well. The attack has prompted a complete overhaul of the city’s software and systems, including system upgrades, new software, and the purchasing of new security services, computers, tablets, laptops, and mobile phones. The only way of ensuring a full recovery apart from paying the ransom is to rebuild affected machines. 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