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Alaskan Town Finds Solace in Typewriters Following Last Week's BitPaymer Ransomware Infection (bleepingcomputer.com)
Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for BleepingComputer: On Monday, officials from Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su), a borough part of the Anchorage Metropolitan Statistical Area, said they are still recovering from a ransomware infection that took place last week, on July 24. The ransomware infection crippled the Borough's government networks and has led to the IT staff shutting down a large swath of affected IT systems. [...] Officials said they were planning to clean and reinstall 650 desktop computers and servers located on the parts of the Mat-Su network believed to be affected. [...] "Without computers and files, Borough employees acted resourcefully," said Mat-Su Public Affairs Director Patty Sullivan last week. "They re-enlisted typewriters from closets, and wrote by hand receipts and lists of library book patrons and landfill fees at some of the 73 different buildings." Mat-Su IT Director Eric Wyatt identified the "virus" as the BitPaymer ransomware earlier this week, the report said.
Nice to see some people in this country aren't so dependent on high technology that they can still operate without it.
don't hire morons that can barely open microsoft word to be your "it staff".
train your mouse jockies and paper pushers, and treat them well enough so your office staff doesn't turn over every 6 months requiring you to train new worker bees constantly.
problem solved.
linux is cheaper, period. unless you absolutely cannot live or function without a windows-exclusive title. and think real hard before you choose windows.. do you *really* **REALLY** need that particular application or will something else work, or perhaps even work better.. you just never though to actually look for alternatives??
don't believe the microsoft shills (including the government entities being paid by microsoft to 'switch back') and sponsored research 'studies'.... they're entirely bullshit.
I don't think Linux would help to fix stupid... Windows can be made pretty secure, linux can be made very insecure. Regular users should be locked down without the ability to install applications regardless of the OS. If they need to ability to install apps, it should be on a separate machine outside of the firewall.
This is a local government we're talking about. What are the costs to retrain every employee? What are the costs for all the new hardware that doesn't have Linux drivers? What are the costs to rewrite the water-billing software, payroll software, work order system, etc, and then integrate them all together? How many Linux gurus are willing to take the pay cut to work at the same rate as a Windows guru?
It might sound great as an academic exercise but in the real world it is not cost effective. If Linux ever did approach the market share of Windows then the Ransomware problem on Linux would grow to be just as bad.
Probably not very much if the original systems are properly documented so you have a clear idea of what you are doing, and plenty of test data. Plus your hardware costs would probably be 1/4 what they are at present, so you could factor this as part of your "rolling upgrade plan" -you do have plans for a rolling upgrade, don't you?
How many Linux gurus are willing to take the pay cut to work at the same rate as a Windows guru?
Since they are probably 4 times as productive (ie believe the statistic is more like 10 times) none would need to.
You clearly have no idea how costly it is to keep a pile of shit like Windows on the road, even without malware problems.
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