Money in exchange for releasing the data of underground car park users in Tarragona. This is the blackmail that a cracker carried out on the Catalan city council after blocking access to information on the 4,000 subscribers of Aparcaments Municipals de Tarragona, the municipal company that manages the city’s car parks. This was achieved by means of an e-mail that pretended to be from a supplier but which, in reality, when opened, contained a virus that infected the company’s server, rendering the files stored there unusable.
The cybercriminal demanded a payment of 9 bitcoins for returning access to the information of the 4,000 car park subscribers. A figure that would be around €41,000 at the current exchange rate… but which the city council refused to pay. A case that the Mossos d’Esquadra, the State Data Protection Agency and the Tax Agency have been informed. It has also informed the municipal legal services and a company specialising in decryption.