The Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians will NOT pay the ransom being demanded by hackers who devastated tribal services with the cyber attack back on Fenruary 9th. The following is a statement from Tribal Chairman Austin Lowes:
As you know, cyber criminals have tried to extort a ransom for our Tribe’s data since the Feb. 9 cyberattack. Since that time, leadership worked with law enforcement groups, external cyber experts and others to evaluate whether or not to pay that ransom.
After much deliberation, we have determined there is no point in paying their ransom demand. We made this decision based on two key reasons:
First, our internal IT team worked closely with external cyber experts to restore our systems and recover virtually all of our data.
Second, there was no guarantee we would have received what was promised. We could have paid their ransom and still had our data shared on the dark web.
We’ve begun the process of reviewing that stolen information so we can reach out to those who have been impacted and provide free credit monitoring services. This review will take time, though, since our team must manually review hundreds of thousands of documents to determine what information may have been stolen and who that information belongs to.
If we find that your information was compromised, you will receive a letter from the Tribe with how to set up the free credit monitoring service. However, we STRONGLY ENCOURAGE you not to wait and follow the steps posted in the comments to protect yourself now.
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