[2] On May 2, just days before the first infection, mayor Catherine Pugh resigned amidst a corruption scandal and was ultimately convicted and sentenced to 3 years in prison.
In a ransom note, hackers demanded 13 bitcoin (roughly $76,280) in exchange for keys to restore access.
[4][5][6][7][8][9][10] On May 25, security expert Nicole Perlroth speculated that the stolen NSA exploit EternalBlue was used to infiltrate the city's network vulnerabilities and initiate the attack,[11] though in a memoir published in February 2021, Perlroth recanted her original statement after concluding that the exploit was not in fact responsible.
[12] Baltimore was susceptible to such an attack due to its IT practices, which included decentralized control of its technology budget and a failure to allocate money its information security manager wanted to fund cyberattack insurance.
In addition, city employees were unable to use their email system and resorted to creating Gmail accounts as workaround.