Atlanta ransomware recovery bill more than triples

The cost associated with the ransomware attack that crippled the Atlanta city government skyrocketed with the municipality's IT director asking for an additional $9.5 million to deal with the incident's aftermath. This amount is in addition to the $2.7 million cost first estimated in April to get all systems back online. The city was hit with the SamSam ransomware in late March. The attackers originally demanded $51,000 in bitcoin for the decryptor key. Reuters is reporting Atlanta Information Management head Daphne Rackley requested the additional funding from the city council and had to explain to those elected officials that the damage caused by the attack was much more severe than originally believed. Initially the city believed about 20 percent of its system was impacted with nothing critical being involved. Rackley now told the council that about one-third of Atlanta's 424 software programs were knocked offline, including several that are considered “mission critical” Reuters stated. This includes the police department which lost a great deal of criminal evidence, including department's dashcam footage archive.