Riviera Beach Commissioners vote to pay ransom to hacker who shut down city computers
RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — Riviera Beach City Commissioners vote to pay a ransom to the hacker who shut down city computers.
During a special city council meeting held Monday, commissioners voted in favor of using city insurance to pay a hacker 65 Bitcoins, which equates to around $600,000.
At the beginning of June, the Interim IT Director for Riviera Beach, Justin Williams, said a city-wide computer outage was caused by a malicious virus sent in an email.
The outage forced the Riviera Beach Police and Fire Departments to write down 911 calls of paper. Officials say they receive 280 calls a day.
Williams said the cost to completely fix and insure the issue will cost more than $1,000,000.
During Monday's special meeting the City Manager said, “hopefully this will return the city’s computer system to being fully operational.”
She also said law enforcement is investigating, and there will be more information at the conclusion of the inquiry.
