Early Findings: Review of State and Local Government Ransomware Attacks

2019 marks the 30-year anniversary of the first ransomware attack. PC Cyborg (also known as the AIDS Trojan because it targeted AIDS researchers) was clunky and required mailing a physical check to an address in Panama. However, modern ransomware, the kind that most people think of today with Bitcoin demands and threats to have all your files deleted, started in 2013 with ransomware variants like CryptoLocker.

State and local governments were among the first organizations to be hit with ransomware. The first known case was in November 2013, when the Swansea Police Department in Massachusetts was infected with CryptoLocker. There may have been more infections, but ransomware was not a commonly used term in 2013 (see the Kaspersky definition of CryptoLocker as a “virus”), and any earlier attacks may not have been reported as such.