In May, Allan Liska, an intelligence analyst at the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, published research that caught the attention of security analysts and government officials everywhere. It included a list of 169 different ransomware attacks against state and local governments dating back to 2013, but that were now cropping up at an alarming rate.
Many government officials had already keyed into the ransomware threat, but Liska’s research lent new insight to just how broad, aggressive and increasingly common this type of malware had become. Workers at state agencies, municipal districts and grade schools are waking up to find that their computers have been locked and data encrypted by viruses with names like SamSam and WannaCry, as perpetrators in remote countries demand ransoms ranging from hundreds of dollars to millions.
