Today, Mayor Mike Duggan revealed that a city-owned database was held ransom by hackers earlier this year, according to The Detroit News.
The cyber-thieves reportedly demanded a ransom of 2,000 bitcoins — a digital currency worth about $400 per bitcoin, for a total ransom of about $803,500. Duggan said the city took no action since that database was not being used, but it was an eye-opening warning of the city’s vulnerabilities to cyber attacks.
(Duggan also spoke of other “disturbing” inadequacies of Detroit’s tech: “I found the Microsoft Office system we had was about 10 years old and couldn’t sync the calendar to my phone.”)
On Twitter, Detroit ex-pat Mick Collins couldn’t help but crack a joke: “That’s Detroit for you: even the databases are abandoned.”
This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2014.
