McKay said JustTech informed Leonardtown that the ransom demand was $45,000 per computer but that the town’s leaders never seriously considered paying. Instead, they are undertaking the painstaking work of restoring computer system backups. The town has 19 computers, and all but two were frozen. One was spared because the employee who uses it was on vacation and the machine was turned off, and the other was an older computer left at an employee’s home.
On Friday after the computers froze, McKay said, city staffers called JustTech, which told them to start turning off the devices.
“Shut down everything,” JustTech reportedly told the city staffers, noting that the problem was bigger than just their organization.
Source: ‘Shut down everything:’ Global ransomware attack takes a small Maryland town offline
