Ransomware exists only because of incompetent management. Period.
This can only happen in a world where law enforcement just does not give a shit about actual law enforcement. A sort of clown world, if you will.
And a world where even basic security isn't a thing until "we're serious about your privacy," which usually happens after a script kiddie figures out that their database and other systems are wide open with "admin/admin" as the login/pass.
Always sanitize your database queries, kids.
Yeah, it's not like there aren't firewalls that log IP addresses, and methods for backtracing those addresses, and no a VPN would not deter actual federal computer security experts if they were motivated to trace a connection, since the feds have demonstrated their ability to do so in the past.
None of that matters if there isn't basic locked-down security on the systems. Of which there probably wasn't, it wasn't monitored, or no one simply thought it important until the problem occurred.
If I were trying to access a system without permission, I'd probably attempt to destroy logging and other measures as well as recover the wanted data.
In other news: It was GGL all along
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