Baltimore Email, Other Systems Still Offline from May 7 Ransomware Attack

The city of Baltimore's email system remains down today as it continues its recovery from a massive ransomware attack on May 7 that is under investigation by the FBI. 

Baltimore suffered an attack from the so-called Robbinhood ransomware variant but vowed not to pay the ransom, which has not been made public. As of today, the city was unable to send or receive email messages, and Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young said in a statement on Friday that it's unclear just when all of the city's systems would be available. 

"I am not able to provide you with an exact timeline on when all systems will be restored. Like any large enterprise, we have thousands of systems and applications. Our focus is getting critical services back online, and doing so in a manner that ensures we keep security as one of our top priorities throughout this process. You may see partial services beginning to restore within a matter of weeks, while some of our more intricate systems may take months in the recovery process," he said.

Some systems are being rebuilt, he said. "We are well into the restorative process, and as I've indicated, are cooperating with the FBI on their investigation. Due to that investigation, we are not able to share information about the attack."

Researchers at Armor, who have studied the attack, confirmed that as of this posting, no monies had been paid to the Bitcoin wallet address used in the city's ransom note or to the wallet assigned to the City of Greenville, N.C., which was also hit by the same ransomware earlier.

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