The San Francisco Municipal Railway (MUNI) has fallen victim to a ransomware attack.The entire ticketing system was taken offline on Friday evening, and stayed down all day Saturday, with the message: "You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted.)ID:681” appearing on MUNI agents’ computer screens.With no way to collect fares over the weekend, ticket staff was sent home and the turnstiles were opened.Signs were taped to ticket machines all day Saturday indicating the rides would be free.“There’s no impact to the transit service, but we have opened the fare gates as a precaution to minimize customer impact,” Paul Rose told CBS news.“Because this is an ongoing investigation it would not be appropriate to provide additional details at this point.” Gizmodo recently received details from the hacker, who uses the name Andy Saolis, a commonly used pseudonym in similar attacks.They claim to control 2,112 of the computers in MUNI's 8,656 strong network, including all ticket machines.The hacker also named several compromised servers and workstations, some of which appear to be email servers, and threatened to release 30 gigabytes of sensitive information, including data from customers.

The hacker is demanding 100 bitcoins (US$73,000) to return control of the computers, and told the SF Examiner, “We do this for money, nothing else !i hope it’s help to company to make secure IT before we coming !”According to the MUNI annual operating budget, ticket sales generate around $559,000 per day, roughly seven and a half times more than the ransom.A local neighborhood news site, Hoodline, also contacted the hacker using the email provided in the attack.They gave Hoodline a unique bitcoin address, which has received five small payments since the news site published it, worth about $18.However, MUNI will have received a separate address that has not been made public.Further details include the software used to mount the attack, HDDCryptor.According to Trend Micro, a leading producer of anti-malware software and ransomware investigator, the strain of ransomware is an extremely effective one.“HDDCryptor can infect systems as an executable unsuspectingly downloaded from malicious websites or as a file dropped by other malware,” Trend Micro explains.

The software provides the ability to take over the target’s hard drive with a flexible range of infection options, which the company describes as, “a very serious and credible threat not only to home users but also to enterprises.” The software uses 2048-bit encryption, according to the Hacker.Digicert estimates that it would take about 6.4 quadrillion years on a modern desktop computer to break, which is longer than modern science expects matter in the universe to exist.bitcoin football bowlHowever, MUNI may be able to restore their system from backups.dell uk bitcoin- Paul Rose, MUNI spokesperson, as reported by SFGate While products from McAfee, Kaspersky, and MalwareBytes are designed to help stop some ransomware attacks before it happens, the best safety measure has always been to take great backups and be able to restore without much downtime.bitcoin cmd

Other services like Chubb help with recovery efforts, providing more of an insurance policy than an IT defense plan.The FBI states that, “the easiest thing may be to just pay the ransom.” Joseph Bonavolonta, FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Cyber and Counterintelligence Program, said “The ransomware is that good...To be honest, we often advise people just to pay the ransom.” A similar attack occurred in February, when a smaller hack took down the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center system in Los Angeles for 12 days.bitcoin stock market tickerThe hospital reportedly paid a 40 bitcoin ransom to regain control of their system.litecoin pool addressThe following month another hospital in Henderson Kentucky reported a similar attack.bitcoin hard drive rubbish dump

This has become so widespread that large businesses commonly stock up on bitcoins in order to pay ransoms.33 percent of British companies with more than 250 employees, polled by Citrix, are now holding bitcoin for this very purpose.More than half of companies with 501-1000 employees are also doing so.However, bitcoin’s blockchain records all transactions.New York blockchain forensics startup Chainalysis is one of many businesses that trace payments across the blockchain.After going through a successful Barclay’s accelerator program, the company was named official investigator of the lost MtGox bitcoins.Earlier this summer, Chainalysis CEO Michael Grønager stated that great progress is being made working with the police, “Expect to see some arrests soon as law enforcement agencies wrap up their investigations into several ransomware operations.”For a better experience on Facebook, update your browser.First, we'd better explain bitcoin.Bitcoin is what's called a cryptocurrency.There are pictures of bitcoin, but they don't physically exist.

You couldn't bite on one to test its value, as you might if you were a cartoon cowboy.The coins are "mined" using computers, and yet they don't get spat out like the winnings at a casino.They are data, strings of code.The "crypto" in cryptocurrency refers to the use of cryptography to secure a currency and protect the privacy of those who use it.If you're in law enforcement, protecting privacy is good and bad - bad when it concerns criminals like ransomware hackers.After all, you'd want to bring them to book, but you can't if you don't know their identities.Fortunately, cryptocurrencies, as with most technologies, are imperfect.Cryptography is often used to keep secrets.But when it comes to bitcoin, it's more about transparency, making every transaction traceable.It's one reason why governments love cryptocurrencies.They would like to adopt some of the underlying technology in everyday financial operations.But governments also loath cryptocurrencies.While the transactions are traceable, the people making the transactions might not be - they may hide behind fake names or use sophisticated digital clearing houses to wash dodgy earnings.

Bitcoin: is it a coin?Is it a bubble?Cryptocurrencies are an "underground" technology thought to be largely used by nefarious characters either holding unsuspecting people to ransom or dealing drugs.Oh, and no one's paying tax on that, so that's a big no-no, too.Forget tax for a minute.I can use cryptocurrencies to buy stuff?Yes, some things you might "need" and other things you'd do better without.As with "real" physical cash - those grotty banknotes and coins we love to lose down the cracks of sofas - a cryptocurrency is a form of payment.It's used digitally - on the internet - for buying anything from drugs to guns and porn on the darknet, or what famously became the most expensive pizza ever (it cost 10,000 bitcoins in 2010, worth $7 million, or 6.3 million euros, three years later).The WannaCry or Wcrypt ransomware attack took out Germany's national rail service The darknet, or deep web as it's also known, is not only frequented by criminals.It's also used by investigative journalists and activists, for instance, who need to communicate anonymously.

And they might buy stuff, too.But it's only on the internet?Well, you can export your bitcoin for "hard cash" in the real world, the same as with a PayPal account.But why bother exporting bitcoin when pubs and cafes in Berlin will accept it as legal tender via a smartphone?On the other hand, if you were a ransomware hacker and you'd made a killing, you definitely would want to export your wad.To paraphrase Damian Lewis' character in the TV show "Billions," how else could you rub it in people's faces?The problem is exporting your cryptocurrency leaves you more traceable than you might like, especially if you are dealing in criminal activities.Your cash will have to go somewhere - a bank account or credit card - and even if you've stolen a batch of credit card numbers, you'll want to spend it somehow.And that won't go unnoticed.So is bitcoin an über-currency, like euros and dollars?There are at least 100 different cryptocurrencies, including newcomers Ethereum, Zcash and TCC (The Champ Coin).

Bitcoin just happens to be one of the better known ones.Perhaps that's to do with the mystery surrounding its inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto.People still ask whether Nakamoto ever existed.The name is a pseudonym, so much is clear, but who is behind it?Is it a man or a woman, an individual, or a group of people, whose make-up constantly evolves?Occasionally, pretenders like Australian Craig Wright pop up, claiming the title, but the issue has never been settled, and it probably doesn't even matter.The fact is that bitcoin - while far from mainstream - has been relatively influential and credited with a general drive towards a "cashless society."That's in part due to its use of "blockchain" technology.Blockchain refers to a handful of technologies in one.For instance, a blockchain might use a "hash chain" to create a "tamper evident" log, as researcher Andrew Miller told DW in a 2016 interview.That means that whenever a piece of information in the chain is altered, there's a log of that.A lot of cryptocurrencies do that.

No one likes a virus, but it's good business for cyber security firms.The WannaCry attackers have made only $55,000 Bitcoin, however, was the first to introduce a decentralized, public ledger.The bitcoin ledger is anonymous, up to a point."It's pseudonymous," said Miller."You don't have to register with your real name, but your transactions are generally linkable […] unless you take special measures to "mix" your transactions.Hey, I'm a ransomware hacker.Tell me more about these special measures!Well, it's not that we'd like to encourage any criminal activity.But say you had some "tainted" bitcoins.You could use a clearing house or bitcoin mixing service, like CoinMixer.As they write on their website: "[It] severs the links between your old address and a new address by sending coins from you to other people and coins from them to you.It also randomizes transaction amounts and adds time delays to the transactions.Generally there is no link between the original transactions and the final address of the coins."

But, surely, crime ain't as easy as that?If there's honor among - or about - thieves, and you're using technology for your heist, then make sure you know what you're doing, especially on bitcoin.Put another way: If you say you'll hand over the goods when people pay, make sure you know how.Don't do like the WannaCry attackers.In the UK, WannaCry disrupted hospital services within the National Health Service Matthew Hickey, a cyber security expert and director of Hacker House in London, says the code behind the WannaCry attack suggests "an amateurish behavior."The attackers seem "unable to handle an attack of this scale," Hickey told DW.There are two main elements in a ransonware attack.There's the ransomware, which is the actual payload, the thing that does the dirty work, and a worm, which is the "delivery vehicle."And it's possible, says Hickey, the two elements of WannaCry were written by two different authors who had different motivations."This attack may not have been financially motivated," he said.