Ransomware Attack Targeted Teamsters Union in 2019. But They Just Refused to Pay (nbcnews.com) 149
NBC reports that America's "Teamsters" labor union was hit by a ransomware attack demanding $2.5 million back in 2019.
"But unlike many of the companies hit by high-profile ransomware attacks in recent months, the union declined to pay, despite the FBI's advice to do so, three sources familiar with the previously unreported cyberattack told NBC News." Personal information for the millions of active and retired members was never compromised, according to a Teamsters spokesperson, who also said that only one of the union's two email systems was frozen along with other data. Teamsters officials alerted the FBI and asked for help in identifying the source of the attack. They were told that many similar hacks were happening and that the FBI would not be able to assist in pursuing the culprit.
The FBI advised the Teamsters to "just pay it," the first source said. "They said 'this is happening all over D.C. ... and we're not doing anything about it,'" a second source said.
Union officials in Washington were divided over whether to pay the ransom — going so far as to bargain the number down to $1.1 million, according to the sources — but eventually sided with their insurance company, which urged them not to pony up... The Teamsters decided to rebuild their systems, and 99 percent of their data has been restored from archival material — some of it from hard copies — according to the union's spokesperson.
The FBI's communications office did not reply to repeated requests for comment. The FBI's stance is to discourage ransomware payments.
NBC News draws a lesson from the fact that it took nearly two years for this story to emerge. "An unknown number of companies and organizations have been extorted without ever saying a word about it publicly."
"But unlike many of the companies hit by high-profile ransomware attacks in recent months, the union declined to pay, despite the FBI's advice to do so, three sources familiar with the previously unreported cyberattack told NBC News." Personal information for the millions of active and retired members was never compromised, according to a Teamsters spokesperson, who also said that only one of the union's two email systems was frozen along with other data. Teamsters officials alerted the FBI and asked for help in identifying the source of the attack. They were told that many similar hacks were happening and that the FBI would not be able to assist in pursuing the culprit.
The FBI advised the Teamsters to "just pay it," the first source said. "They said 'this is happening all over D.C. ... and we're not doing anything about it,'" a second source said.
Union officials in Washington were divided over whether to pay the ransom — going so far as to bargain the number down to $1.1 million, according to the sources — but eventually sided with their insurance company, which urged them not to pony up... The Teamsters decided to rebuild their systems, and 99 percent of their data has been restored from archival material — some of it from hard copies — according to the union's spokesperson.
The FBI's communications office did not reply to repeated requests for comment. The FBI's stance is to discourage ransomware payments.
NBC News draws a lesson from the fact that it took nearly two years for this story to emerge. "An unknown number of companies and organizations have been extorted without ever saying a word about it publicly."
Risky move (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Risky move (Score:5, Funny)
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amazing.
of all the people in the world that could be hacked.
ivan targeted the teamsters.
i do not think ivans boss has to worry about the outcome of this particular group of hackers.
ivan thinks of this group like pawns.
i do think that ivans boss does have to worry.
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American Mob vs. Russian Mob
Available on Pay-Per-View.
Also, it's takes some bravado to attack one of America's largest labor unions on Labor Day.
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cool.
i would watch it
And this is why I take Teamsters seriously. (Score:5, Insightful)
Realizing that they negotiate with some of the most difficult and powerful corporations in the world, ransomware lackeys are nothing to them.
Re:And this is why I take Teamsters seriously. (Score:4, Interesting)
Realizing that they negotiate with some of the most difficult and powerful corporations in the world, ransomware lackeys are nothing to them.
Uh, they didn't "deal" with the lackeys at all. They became the lackey and got to work restoring all their shit the old-fashioned way. Apparently restoring even from hard copy.
Absolutely they wield massive power in the business world but in this case? Really no different from any other victim. Just a bit better prepared.
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Re: And this is why I take Teamsters seriously. (Score:2)
This could best be described as a "partial" hack, only seizing one of two (why two?) email systems.
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They became the lackey and got to work restoring all their shit the old-fashioned way.
So what. That's what sticking to your values looks like, even if it means doing things the hard way.
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I figured the Teamsters' counteroffer was to have the hackers legs broken...?
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Don't be daft. Even if they found out who was behind it, they have to contract out the hit to some outfit probably in a foreign country. The crooks would get wind of it, or worse the FSB would. Soon, some poor innocent would be falsely fingered and whacked, and then there'd be an international incident. That would cause the Fed. Gov. to come down on the Teamsters, something they definitely do not want.
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When the Mob/mafia is involved, the person either disappears or is found suspect of 'suicide'.
We will never know when/if the Teamsters get their revenge because there will never be a headline that some known member of insert-hacking-group-here was found dead from an apparent suicide or has been reported missing. At best there might be some 'milk carton' somewhere with their face on it, or a tiny blurb in the obituaries a
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Breaking something a little lower would stop ransomware from reproducing.
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They didn't "win," they just happened to be able to mostly recreate what was locked. If it had been more important and not reproducible they wouldn't have been any better off than any other victim.
They lost some time but didn't pay out or lose anything. I'd call that a win. Not a great one, but still a win. The hackers on the other hand spent time getting into the system and going so far as to negotiate with the Teamsters, and got nothing. On top of that, I'd guess that their security is better than it was too.
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Two words. (Score:4, Funny)
Baseball bat.
Kneecap.
(OK, so that's three words. Sue me.)
OK, I have to ask. . . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
. . . this being the Teamsters, whose knees got broken, and which hackers got to swim with the fishes?? ( not joking. The Teamsters play hardball at such things. . .)
I grew up in a Teamsters home: both parents were members. You messed with the Teamsters at your peril. . . .
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. . . this being the Teamsters, whose knees got broken, and which hackers got to swim with the fishes?? ( not joking. The Teamsters play hardball at such things. . .)
They would first need to find out the identities of said hackers and then need to either send people to Russia or hire someone in Russia. I don't see them sending people and I'm pretty sure the hackers are connected with those that could be hired.
Re: OK, I have to ask. . . . . (Score:2)
The teamsters refused to take their insurance companies money and pay the ransom, rather they collected 'reimbursement' from their insurance company, which a) gave them the opportunity to 'correct' any historical emails, b) gave them plausible deniability to claim any email or document from before the hack was 'lost', c) over-charge their insurance company for the recovery work.
Anyone of those is reason enough not to pay the $1.1 million ransom, but as a package the upside to refusing to pay was simply too
I suspect Igor... (Score:2)
... and his friends would be able to find people a lot more dangerous than a bunch of overweight manual workers with baseball bats in the highly unlikely event it came to that sort of thing.
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These are criminals we're talking about. They were probably Teamster's members.
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While I am sure there were connections to the Mafia, the Teamsters are an entirely separate organization Also, the roots of the Teamsters tend to be Irish, not Sicilian. . .
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WWJHD? (Score:3)
What would Jimmy Hoffa do?
Find the bastards and break their legs if they were lucky. He certainly wouldn't involve the FBI.
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Yeah, I think that some Russian hackers would end up in a messy "construction accident" if they messed with the Teamsters during the Jimmy Hoffa era.
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Not that computers or the internet were sophisticated enough to have ransomware.
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Teamsters officials alerted the FBI and asked for help in identifying the source of the attack.
The Teamsters involved the FBI to find out who did it. Not for advise on what to do regarding the ransomware.
The Teamsters know what to do. They just needed help on figuring out who to do it to.
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What would Jimmy Hoffa do?
Wind up missing as his payment for playing with REAL mobsters
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Flunkie: Jimmy ole boy, we've been hacked!
Jimmy: What, someone is cutting down our trees?
Flunkie: NO! Our computer systems, the ones we require to keep our bullshit jobs.
Jimmy: Uh-oh! I'll murderize them, I'll have them torn limb from limb! Where's my blood pressure meds. . .
Flunkie: Hmmm. . .too late, Jimmy, should have asked for them BEFORE I told you. I'll tell your secretary you are out for the rest of the day.
Risks keep on going up (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably more like scapegoat. (Score:2)
If you're the one who kept stuff on premises and then couldn't handle this situation you're gone. If you handed it to Amazon or whoever instead and they get fucked it's on them and you have someone to point the finger at. This is middle manager 101 - never take responsibility for anything ever.
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I worked at a small software company making a niche software product for plumbers about 15 years ago. They had been in business since the early 80s, and their software engineering practices weren't exactly up to scratch, to put it like that. They used file locking for "revision control", and it was increasingly difficult to get the toolchain they relied on to work on modern computers.
But one thing they did was make tape backups of EVERYTHING, and store it off site in two different locations. Every week. (Ye
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When was the last time we had a ransomware attack on the cloud? At least they know what the word backup means.
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When was the last time we had a ransomware attack on the cloud? At least they know what the word backup means.
It took 2 years to find out the Teamsters had been hacked. Of all the organizations in the world, you will never hear about a breach of a cloud company. It would destroy their business to admit it. This is why public disclosure laws will always have loopholes, too.
Respect for the teamsters (Score:2)
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Teamsters was thrilled to have removed that 1% of incriminating evidence having done a careful review of all data to be restored.
Re: Respect for the teamsters (Score:4, Insightful)
They called a house painter, not a tech company (Score:2)
So, I heard you paint houses. This guy doesn't know it, but his interior needs painting.
Perhaps they had backups. (Score:5, Informative)
Despite the idiotic response from the 2019 FBI (I sure home Biden would fire those bozo's who recommended it soon) YOU DON'T PAY THE RANSOM!
When you see this is a threat, you improve your IT Security, infrastructure Make sure your backups are ready to restore data at a tolerable tolerance, for your organization. Make sure your employees are trained on how to spot and respond to malware and tricks to get you install them, make sure that security permissions are actually setup for what people need, vs just giving out higher security permissions as a "benefit" for being in with the right people. Just because you are the owner of the company, it doesn't mean you should have access to all the computer and data. Nor should say your Marking department have access to the Finance file shares....
A lot of this can be done without spending millions on new software and consultants, just some extra employee time by your IT Staff, with support for upper management to reevaluate what you are currently doing and what can be done better. Knowing quite well, good Security Practices back in 1999 may not be as good for 2021, things can always be improved and reworked. Today's best security ideas next decade may be a joke.
That is the nature of business in the 21st century. With uncertainty rising, with many factors, organizations need to town down their quarterly earnings, and plan to weather multiple problems and crisis.
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I think the frequency with which these ransomware attackers find organizations completely unprepared demonstrates that despite that management has not achieved the status of a profession yet.
A profession is about standards. A doctor treating an illness knows the standard of care for that illness. A lawyer drafting a contract knows what kind of standard clauses to put into it. These standards represent the collective experience of all their colleagues. A lawyer who has to learn the need for a force majeure
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It's inconceivable to me how any company in the last 2 decades could operate without backups of their critical data? Ransomware attacks should be considered no different than any other disaster like a fire in the server room. The solution isn't paying off the hackers who caused your problem to begin with! The solution is restoring from your backups and then shoring up the security flaws that got you into the problem to begin with!
Paying the hackers still leaves you in a completely unknown state; Will the
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YOU DON'T PAY THE RANSOM!
That's dumb. The reality is you do a cost benefit analysis to see if its worth paying the ransom. Fixing IT security after the fact is not a "business continuity strategy". And the moral high ground is worthless if you go out of business to achieve it.
FBI (Score:2)
What a joke of an agency.
Payment (Score:5, Interesting)
I know someone who works for a company that got hit with a serious ransomware attack. Took down their entire production system. The FBI told *them* that it is illegal to pay the ransom, and if they did they would be going to jail. I'm not sure the FBI knows what they are doing at this point.
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I know someone who works for a company that got hit with a serious ransomware attack. Took down their entire production system. The FBI told *them* that it is illegal to pay the ransom, and if they did they would be going to jail. I'm not sure the FBI knows what they are doing at this point.
Well, you didn't mention the fact that the system that got compromised, was the W.O.P.R.** It's kind of important.
(** = Yup, you guessed it...last time they changed the password, was 1983.)
FBI Agent just hated Unions or that Union (Score:2)
It's easy to see the Agent had a bias and went against their long standing policy for this victim.
The FBI is way behind tech wise but this ransom stuff is new and not really something they can do a whole lot about even if they were up to date, well funded, and well staffed. It's all based around secure encryption done by expert hackers. It's not going to be brute forced and working with bitcoins to catch foreign experts is also not what the FBI is setup to do. It's more of a CIA or NSA type thing... Somebo
HTF Is This News? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ransomware attacks are common, for years.
Not paying is the appropriate thing to do, but some orgs have no choice for financial or technical reasons.
This happened two years ago. Why the fuck is it being reported now, as if it were some meaningful event? It's a big fat "so fucking what?" dug up form the annals of ancient history.
Is there a dearth of recent ransomware drama and in order to continue fomenting fear and they're having to did into the archives?
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Murders are common. For thousands of years now.
How many died in major US cities this weekend? Oh, you don't know?
But if say, a politician got killed...needless to say we'd certainly hear about that murder...
And targeting the fuel pipeline that feeds 45% of the Eastern seaboard of the US, ain't exactly sitting in the category of "so fucking what".
Also, clickbait. "We'll report on anything that creates attention these days." - Professional Attention Whore
The lesson (Score:4, Interesting)
My Company was hit (Score:2)
My Company was hit in 2017. We didn't pay. We had secure off-site back ups of all of our important data. It took nearly a week to get everything up and going, and all of our older files are now dated 2017 (which can be a bit annoying sometimes, but not typically an issue), but we didn't have to pay a dime.
We didn't pay a dime because we aren't stupid and we had off-site back ups. It's not that hard people.
Re: My Company was hit (Score:2)
Yep, and circumstances matter greatly. A business operating on thin margins might not afford a week of being offline. Could also be the timing of the attack. Hitting an airline in peak season would be a different matter to doing the same when demand is very low.
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If your business can't afford a week offline your business is in serious trouble. Shit happens. Hurricanes happen. Winter storms happen. Power outages happen. Covid-19 happens. Construction screw ups down that cut a fiber line down the street happen.
It sucks, but all businesses of all sizes should be able to survive much more than a week fully shut down. If your business can't survive a week shut down, you need to hire a new CFO.
Today's Dilbert (Score:2)
Good security (Score:2)
This is at least a little bit funny (Score:2)
Ransomware gang: "Lets make a bunch of work for a labor union and then charge them to to do the work better than they can!"
"...wait, that didn't work? Don't these guys care about efficiency and deadlines? We definitely charged them less than it would take to fix it themselves, right?"
Hard earned extortion money (Score:2)
Of course they're not going to give any away to fellow extortionists.
If only more entities would do the same then perhaps these jackals would find more productive work for their technology skills.
If it was the New York teamsters... (Score:2)
"Hey Paulie. I want you to tell me by next week about those ransomware jamokes."
"I can tell you right now, boss. They sleep with the fishes."
Defund the FBI! (Score:2)
Pay the hackers?
What's next? Pay the blackmailers, bank robbers, utility companies?
slashdot used to be where... (Score:2)
people knew what they were talking about.
It's been decades since the Mob controlled the Teamsters.
And the Teamsters seem, unlike all the CEOs and capitalists, be more interested in protecting themselves, and security for some reason. Maybe because there's no big payout to the execs for *not* doing security and backups.
Nice ransomware racket youse got here (Score:2)
Sure would be a shame is something were to happen to it...
Interesting IT strategy (Score:2)
The Teamsters decided to rebuild their systems, and 99 percent of their data has been restored from archival material â" some of it from hard copies
Interesting result...one could imagine an IT department desperate to rebuild aging systems, that would malware themselves just to gut buy-in on a total rebuild.
Not saying that is what happened here, just that you could imagine that being a possibility at some point for some companies. It might make for a good book anyway...
Kudos to the Teamsters IT for bei
Teamsters and networking (Score:2)
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They had secure backups that worked, the data was encrypted and they didn't expose any information, they only contacted the FBI to catch the criminals, they didn't need their data back as they had not lost anything but time
Secure Offsite Backups (Score:2)
This is one of the reasons you have Secure Offsite backups ... ...if it is cheaper and simpler to pay the ransom you either don't have secure backups at all or they are too expensive or not being done right ...
Re:the FBI advised them to pay??? (Score:4)
Stop watching TV, bad for you.
Re: the FBI advised them to pay??? (Score:2)
Yeah, that would be like the US Gov't setting up a phony secure cellphone provider, giving them access to criminals private communication. Ludicrous!
Oh, wait - they did! [pcmag.com]
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maybe it is the FBI doing these ransomeware attacks via a proxy? maybe the NSA or Secret_Service should investigate, government corruption is always possible
We're talking about three-letter agencies here. Under a government that is literally approving trillions to spend, and falling victim to ransomware almost weekly at the city, state, and Federal level.
Why would ANY three-letter agency, become desperate enough, to create A) job stability or B) revenue) from ransomware right now? They could obtain billions in funding with a terrorist fart's worth of threat.
They wouldn't even get the word "ransomware" out of their mouths before funding was approved.
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The old adage holds: "don't explain with malice what can be explained with stupidity".
The sensible thing would be to not only advise against paying ransoms, but make it strictly illegal to pay ransoms.
You'd still have attackers who wrecked things for fun, and maybe even attackers who wrecked things for political purposes, but the fun would be over for those who merely wreck things for profit.
Re: the FBI advised them to pay??? (Score:2)
The problem with a US govt-backed hack attack is it eliminates the credibility of all computer data exposed in the attack. They may have it, but it won't hold up in court, since the data was compromised in hack.
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Are you trying to imply that white supremacist organizations, often set up embezzlement schemes at the Federal level and assume they won't get caught, or are you just pulling idiotic race-baiting political shit out of your ass to justify your full-time troll job?
Inquiring minds, would like to know.
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I have a fucking Swamp to sell you
Well, you got one part right.
Re:the FBI advised them to pay??? (Score:5, Insightful)
maybe it is the FBI doing these ransomeware attacks via a proxy? maybe the NSA or Secret_Service should investigate, government corruption is always possible
Maybe Elvis is still alive. Maybe the Moon landing was staged. Maybe 9/11 was an inside job. Maybe Jewish space lasers are real? Maybe Hillary do eat/rape kids on the back of a pizza restaurant?
Or maybe Steven Colbert was right when he quipped "I cannot prove it, but I can say it"?
I fucking hate when people (regardless of ideology) say "maybe " without having anything to back it up. This is not to say the NSA or FBI can be shady (they are.) But don't pander shit without having something to back it up.
Shades of Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World".
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Oh, they're being charitable.
Because if FBI was smart, and had US businesses best interests at heart, they would of course tell people to never pay a ransom. They might even make it illegal, and set up mandatory insurance schemes to compensate ransomware victims to make paying the ransom even more unappealing. That would cut down on ransomware really quickly.
So, if you really, really insist that the FBI is always smart, it's "reasonable" to assume they play five-dimensional chess for the benefit of someone
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Re: the FBI advised them to pay??? (Score:2)
What's the reward in destroying their systems? How does that pay their ISP bills?
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No hoax, the former alleged president's cronies admitted to being in bed with the Russkies. Smells like collusion to me. Then there is all the money the former alleged president's son claimed they received from Russians. Given the former alleged president's track record, I'll guess it hasn't been paid back. The Russkies play dirty too.
Re: the FBI advised them to pay??? (Score:2, Informative)
What the fuck?
Biden's family took cash from corrupt Ukraine company, communist Chinese leaders, and the wife of a Russian mayor. All proven.
What are you 'claiming' Trump's children did again? It's challenging to follow your rambling accusations.
Re: the FBI advised them to pay??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's the Biden claims, with attribution:
Biden's family took cash from corrupt Ukraine company,
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/i... [senate.gov]
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
communist Chinese leaders,
https://www.nbcnews.com/politi... [nbcnews.com]
and the wife of a Russian mayor.
https://www.newsweek.com/hunte... [newsweek.com]
Re:This is amusing. (Score:5, Funny)
So many people on slashdot with differing opinions!
Oh the horror!
Quick tell me which is SJW so I know who to hate without further thought.
Re: This is amusing. (Score:2)
No, you can't really speak negatively about Apple here. Literally only yesterday I made a factual statement about corporate liability, I got modded down as "overrated", and two people who replied to me stating that the laws don't apply to Apple got modded 5 insightful.
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Nah, it's the Ayn Rand crowd, mention "union" to them and they go berserk, wanting to know how we can shower more tax giveaways to the rich.
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I was anti-union. Then I took a job that forced me to join a union.
Now I'm even more anti-union.
I don't, however see anything at all to suggest organized crime. It's mostly self important people who like to play student council.
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I'm not particularly pro-union or anti-union. But I'm very pro- organizations that refuse to give in to ransomware gangs. If a lot more organizations were like that, ransomware would be a lot less common.
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So many people on Slashdot indicating that unions are organized crime.
Well, this is the gangsters union you're talking about...
If you don't understand, then you need to read about the history of the unions in our country.
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So many pro-union people on Slashdot.
So many people on Slashdot indicating that unions are organized crime.
Don't rule out the possibility that both groups of people are correct.
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Isn't corruption wonderful?
It's just American myth telling. The Irish have the wee folk, Russians have Slavic nightmares, and Americans have tough guys whacking people and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
Unions are not organized crime (Score:3)
There's a rather famous story of a bunch of "Sheriffs" pointing a mini-gun at Union minors back in the 70s. It's mostly famous because there was a guy with a Camera there at the time.
Rico laws, massive gun
Re: Unions are not organized crime (Score:2)
employers would often use violence against Unions right up until the mid 80s when outsourcing weakened them.
Seriously? "Outsourcing"? I personally would have thought the migration of manufacturing work off-shore would have hurt the unions more than outsourcing IT/help desk work...
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There's an old joke: A CEO, a Teamster and a programmer are around a table with 12 cookies. The CEO reaches down, grabs 10 cookies and gobbles them up. Then he turns to t
Re: This is amusing. (Score:2)
I think that even the most pro union people aren't in denial about them being an integral part of the mafia. The history of corruption and violence just runs way too far and way too deep. They may not like it when you talk about it, but deep down, they know it's all true -- all of it.
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That is why they were able to do it, nothing special about it.
(IT) "So, we've got hacked by ransomware too. How did the Teamsters recover?"
(Teamsters) "We used hard copies."
Nothing special you say? Try that recovery method, in our modern "paperless" world...
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Is the FBI really reversing course, or is there evidence they the FBI is worried about being lost with possibly open investigations into places like Teamsters with histories of criminal corruption?
(FBI) "Yeah, we're here, to uh, help recover your data..."
(Teamsters) "Yeah, we know. I'd imagine those investigations are a BITCH to start over..."
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...but isn't it implied that companies who paid then left compromised systems in place? If not, why pay at all if you're just going to wipe and reload anyway?
And shame on the FBI for suggesting people pay. They obviously have no idea how to handle these cases and should stop presenting themselves as any kind of authority or expert in the matter.
(FBI) "Do you have backups?"
(Customer) "Yes, but they're encrypted too/doesn't include everything we need. And we're dead in the water without it."
Just how fucking far deep into the questionnaire would YOU have to go in order to come to the same conclusion?
It's called perspective. Learn it. 99% of the time, it sure as shit isn't the FBI's fault for you not having acceptable backups. This is like trying to blame obesity, on the large spoon.
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it sure as shit isn't the FBI's fault for you not having acceptable backups.
We don't shrug and do nothing because a burglar came in through an unlocked door. Blaming the victim isn't helpful.
The agents taking notes might look at you askance but it's not their job to judge your preparedness or lack thereof. Their job is to do their best to find the criminals and recover your money. The special agent in charge ought to take you aside and give you a stern talking to about security but that's not part of the official investigation.
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...The special agent in charge ought to take you aside and give you a stern talking to about security but that's not part of the official investigation.
Yes, they "ought" to, and they often do.
Yes. Educating the ignorant at this point in the won't-happen-to-me ransomware game, IS part of their "job", because they already know how viable going after the criminals is, after they receive the 30-second debrief from the NSA as to which APT attacked them.