A Florida city is paying $600,000 in Bitcoins to a hacker who took over local government computers after an employee clicked on a malicious email link.

 

Riviera Beach City Commissioners vote to pay a ransom to the hacker during a special city council meeting, says a news report. The city will use city insurance to make the payment.

At the beginning of June, the Interim IT Director for Riviera Beach, Justin Williams, said a city-wide computer outage was caused by a malicious virus sent in an email.

The outage forced the Riviera Beach Police and Fire Departments to write down 911 calls of paper, the report said. Officials say they receive 280 calls a day.