Police agencies buckle to clever cyber criminals

Never negotiate with terrorists.

It's an oft-repeated mantra, in movies and television shows at least, if not among actual law enforcement officials.

When faced with their own "hostage situation," however, a group of Lincoln County, Maine, law enforcement agencies gave in and paid the ransom.

In this case, it was 300 Bitcoin, about $66,000 at today's exchange rate for the unregulated currency, which exists only in electronic form.

That was expensive, but considering hackers had locked four city police departments and a sheriff's office out of their computer files, it was the cheapest option available.

Officials think someone on the network opened a program, sent in by email, which then scanned the network for documents, encrypted each one, then notified the system administrator that the files would be lost forever if the ransom wasn't paid in a few days.

The same thing happened to police departments in Massachusetts, and probably many other instances that have probably gone unreported.

The problem is bad enough that the FBI is offering millions of dollars in reward money to catch the people behind the malicious software.

It's a good reminder to never open an email attachment from someone you don't know -- and be careful even if the name looks familiar.

And, keep your anti-virus software up to date.

Don't think you have to go all the way to Seattle or Silicon Valley to get help if your company runs into cyber criminals, however.

In its first attempt, University of Nebraska at Kearney's six-person cyber defense team recently won the North Central Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, qualifying for the national contest in San Antonio, Texas, April 24-26.

That caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Defense, which called the team's sponsor, Dr. Angela Hollman, saying it wanted to recruit the team.

All six members, including those who still had a couple of years left in college.

The North Central competition "was like something out of an old, cliché movie," said one member of the team, Devin McIntyre of Odell, Nebraska. "We continually faced adversity with calm, collected action and stuck to our game plan. (To win) felt amazing."

Corporate support has helped turn Kearney into the "tech capital of rural Nebraska," Hollman said.

With sharp minds and good broadband access, there's no reason Southwest Nebraska and the rest of the state can't get in on the act.