Welcome to Axis ProRata.

We take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

I'm Dave Bramack.

On today's show, the FCC's message for Facebook and a possible space crash in Silicon Valley.

But first, holding cities ransom.

So last Friday, the city government of New Orleans shut down.

Not at 5 p.m. like it would on a normal Friday, but hours earlier after the detection of a cyber

attack in its municipal computer network.

What the city referred to as, quote, an abundance of caution resulted in all of its computer networks, internal and external, being taken offline.

City offices, the physical ones, were closed, and even the official New Orleans homepage was unavailable.

Now, New Orleans officials say there is no evidence that actual information was compromised, but not all of its systems are back online

yet. And the overall episode reflects the vulnerabilities of city governments to cyber

intrusions at a time when more and more of their services, including vital, sometimes

life-saving information, are being provided virtually. One thing missing here from the New Orleans

attack was a so-called request for ransom, which

is when a hacker demands money to put everything back to normal.

But ransomware attacks against U.S. cities and towns are more common than you might think,

and often very difficult to navigate.

By the numbers here, Barakouda networks reported in September that 50 U.S. cities and towns

had seen ransomware attacks so far in 2019.

And a more recent report from a company called MC Soft puts the number north of 100.

And that latter report expands the figure to 950 if you also include educational and

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