News Roundup (December 8, 2017)
Christopher Tyner
As the Charlotte Observer reports, a hacker attacked Mecklenburg County’s computer systems this week, locking the county out of its electronic files and demanding a ransom of two bitcoins to provide an encryption key. At the time of writing, two bitcoins were worth roughly $30,000. On Wednesday, Mecklenburg County Manager Dena Diorio said that the county will not pay the ransom and, instead, will fix the situation itself. The sensational story has become national news.