Pennsylvania district attorney's office is hit by cybercrime

A Pennsylvania prosecutor's office and two businesses were among hundreds of thousands of victims of an international cybercrime operation disabled by federal authorities and the European Union last week.

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. tells The Associated Press his office was the unnamed "state governmental entity in Allegheny County" that was among the victims of the Avalanche network.

The feds say the office paid nearly $1,400 in a bitcoin ransom to free up its infected computer network in January 2015.

The Justice Department says the network infected at least 500,000 computers worldwide, including those of unnamed businesses in Carnegie and New Castle, which had their banking information hacked but didn't lose any money.

© 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Citation: Pennsylvania district attorney's office is hit by cybercrime (2016, December 5) retrieved 19 April 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2016-12-pennsylvania-district-attorney-office-cybercrime.html
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