The Ransomware Attack That Locked Hotel Guests Out of Their Rooms

Josephine Wolff wrote for Slate about the ransomware attack that locked guests out of their hotel rooms:

Of the various things you may be worrying about these days, getting locked out of your lovely hotel room in scenic Austria is probably not very high on the list. But last week, guests at the Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt in the Austrian village of Turracherhohe found themselves unable to open their hotel room doors. In the end, the hotel ended up having to pay about $1,800 (two bitcoins) to hackers who had penetrated its systems and managed to remotely lock its doors.

As tales of ransomware go, it’s a story that’s both silly and serious. A ski resort being held for ransom due to its inability to create working room keys is nowhere near as scary or dangerous as the hospital in Hollywood where ransomware shut down the computer systems last year, until administrators finally agreed to pay a 40-bitcoin ransom (or roughly $17,000 at the time) a few days after it was first infected.