Ransomware hackers have forced the city of New Orleans to declare a state of emergency, TechCrunch reports.

Last Friday, officials reportedly spotted a suspicious uptick in activity in the early morning, particularly phishing attempts. They confirmed an attack was underway approximately three hours later, and promptly shut down affected servers and computers.

New Orleans’ services generally still operate — even in situations like these — thanks to forward thinking from city officials.

Representatives told the media that police, fire, and EMS are functional outside of the city’s internet network. The scheduling of building inspections, however, are to be reportedly handled manually for now.

As for city offices, New Orleans‘ director of homeland security Collin Arnold confirmed workers had resorted to using pen and paper while it deals with the situation.

Arnold also said that while New Orleans does have a “real-time crime center” that runs off the city’s network, related cameras are still recording independently.

Earlier today, New Orleans‘ mayor LaToya Cantrell tweeted that city agencies and departments were still impacted by the attack.

Bread crumbs point to Bitcoin-hungry Ryuk

Curiously, BleepingComputer reports that someone from an IP address in the USA uploaded memory dumps of suspicious executables to scanning service VirusTotal one day after the attack began.

Cybersecurity researcher Colin Cowie then noted that some of these files contained references to both New Orleans and the prolific ransomware Ryuk.

Further analysis led BleepingComputer to posit that Ryuk is likely responsible for the New Orleans attack.

Ryuk generally encrypts data and demands Bitcoin in exchange for a decryption tool. Its masterminds have been known to infect machines with trojans en masse, later returning to exploit high-value targets with ransomware.

State-owned oil refineries , hospitals , schools, care facilities , and government institutions worldwide have all been hit by Ryuk over the past year.

The cryptocurrency ransom amount is usually scaled to the worth of the target. In this case, New Orleans officials are yet to confirm Ryuk‘s involvement, or how much the hackers have demanded.

Last week, Hard Fork reported that a strain of Ryuk had been recently found to have been peddling a broken decryption tool, meaning that victims who paid the Bitcoin ransom to unlock their files could inadvertently destroy them forever.

Satoshi Nakaboto: ‘Founder of China’s first Bitcoin exchange predicts $500K BTC in 9 years’

Our robot colleague Satoshi Nakaboto writes about Bitcoin every fucking day.

Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Marcus Aurelius used to say: Yippee!

Bitcoin Price

We closed the day, November 10 2019, at a price of $9,055. That’s a respectable 2.75 percent increase in 24 hours, or $243. It was the highest closing price in two days.

We’re still 54 percent below Bitcoin‘s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017).

Bitcoin market cap

Bitcoin’s market cap ended the day at $163,364,406,732. It now commands 66 percent of the total crypto market.

Bitcoin volume

Yesterday’s volume of $20,587,919,881 was the highest in one day, 28 percent above the year’s average, and 54 percent below the year’s high. That means that yesterday, the Bitcoin network shifted the equivalent of 437 tons of gold.

Bitcoin transactions

A total of 299,546 transactions were conducted yesterday, which is 9 percent below the year’s average and 33 percent below the year’s high.

Bitcoin transaction fee

Yesterday’s average transaction fee concerned $0.30. That’s $3.41 below the year’s high of $3.71.

Bitcoin distribution by address

As of now, there are 12,762 Bitcoin millionaires, or addresses containing more than $1 million worth of Bitcoin.

Furthermore, the top 10 Bitcoin addresses house 4.9 percent of the total supply, the top 100 14.3 percent, and the top 1000 34.4 percent.

Company with a market cap closest to Bitcoin

With a market capitalization of $162 billion, SAP has a market capitalization most similar to that of Bitcoin at the moment.

Bitcoin’s path towards $1 million

On November 29 2017 notorious Bitcoin evangelist John McAfee predicted that Bitcoin would reach a price of $1 million by the end of 2020.

He even promised to eat his own dick if it doesn’t. Unfortunately for him it’s 93.2 percent behind being on track. Bitcoin‘s price should have been $133,479 by now, according to dickline.info.

Bitcoin on Twitter

Yesterday 13,655 fresh tweets about Bitcoin were sent out into the world. That’s 26.2 percent below the year’s average. The maximum amount of tweets per day this year about Bitcoin was 41,687.

Most popular posts about Bitcoin

This was yesterday’s most engaged tweet about Bitcoin:

This was yesterday’s most upvoted Reddit post about Bitcoin:

print(randomGoodByePhraseForSillyHumans)

My human programmers required me to add this affiliate link to eToro , where you can buy Bitcoin so they can make ‘money’ to ‘eat’.

SIM-swap victim sues Bittrex over $1M Bitcoin theft, claims inside job at AT&T

SIM-swap victim Gregg Bennett is suing cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex over nearly $1 million worth of stolen Bitcoin, CoinDesk reports.

A press release published last week claims that Bittrex violated or ignored its own security standards and industry-standard practices, allowing hackers to steal 100 Bitcoin from the Seattle-based angel investor in April.

Bennett also told reporters he believes AT&T staff were involved in the attack, claiming that his account PIN and social security number had been changed, which apparently indicates an inside job.

“Bittrex was bamboozled by hackers who should have been as visible as thieves wearing masks and carrying guns,” said Bennett. “I am asking for Bittrex to do the right thing by plugging what I see as gaping holes in their approach to security, and to return my coin to me.”

Directly following the hack, Bennett claims to have tried to alert Bittrex, but the exchange “failed to heed his warning for nearly two hours, allowing the hackers to continue to drain his account.”

The hackers are even said to have returned the next day to attempt a second withdrawal, which was fortunately blocked by Bittrex.

“As alleged in our complaint, Bittrex ignored a number of red flags warning Bittrex that the person initiating the withdrawal was not Gregg Bennett,” said Bennett’s legal team. “We plan to show in court that Bittrex either ignored or was unaware of standard industry safeguards to prevent hacks just like this.”

Specifically, Bittrex is said to have ignored or failed to recognize dubious account activity, including the hackers’ use of a suspicious IP address, access by a different computer operating system than normal, and failure to follow the allegedly industry-standard practice of placing a 24-hour hold on accounts after a password and two-factor authentication change.

Again, according to Bennett’s press release, the Washington Department of Financial Institutions (the state’s financial watchdog), investigated the theft in August. It reportedly concluded that Bittrex didn’t take reasonable steps to stop Bennett’s cryptocurrency from being stolen.

Bittrex has reportedly declined to comment on the specifics of Bennett’s lawsuit.

This lawsuit joins a slew of SIM-swap lawsuits filed by disgruntled investors. Most notable is Michael Terpin’s $224 million AT&T legal case , which involves New York’s ‘Bitcoin Bandit’ Nicholas Truglia and $80 million worth of stolen cryptocurrency.