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Insurance company refuses to cover law firm ransomware losses, gets sued
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: June 16, 2017
Ah, ransomware! To thee we sing.
Even if you haven’t been aware of ransomware (and all readers of this column are, of course), the recent news of a worldwide ransomware attacks probably registered somewhere, vaguely, in the back of your mind. Therefore, I’m going to assume at this point that you know what it is. No more explainers.
At least 50 major law firms were ransomware-ed in 2016. Here is one law firm that has a ransomware tale of woe to tell, albeit from 2015: Moses Alphonso Ryan (MAR) out of Rhode Island, who allegedly lost nearly $750,000 in a ransomware attack.
Note: Law firms, in particular, are seen as ransomware “soft targets” by cybercriminals, according to Brian Levine, senior counsel at the Department of Justice’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. That’s because, well, read the dozens of my previous columns on the topic.
MAR was the victim of a 2015 phishing attack, in which a lawyer (yawn) opened an email from an unknown sender (yawn), which attacked the law firm’s computers, which encrypted the law firm’s data, and then the law firm got a ransom notice, and then they tried to pay the ransom, $7,000 in Bitcoins, but they didn’t have a Bitcoin account, so they had to open a bitcoin account, and they paid the ransom, and they got the encryption key, but the encryption key didn’t work, so they paid more ransom, another $18K or so in Bitcoins, and they got the real encryption key, which worked, but the process took three months, and then they couldn’t access their backup data.
In the meantime, MAR claims about $700,000 in “business income interruption” in their insurance filing with Sentinel Insurance Company.
Now, in another ongoing LOL, Sentinel refused coverage, and so now MAR is suing Sentinel. In more LOL, MAR actually admitted to the above iteration of facts in their Complaint. I guess 700 G’s is worth this kind of worldwide embarrassment.
Too funny?
Laugh while you can, because you’re next.