[bariumbitmap]

I'm here to bring a message from the future: they did have usable backups, according to a news article published just a few days after this one:[0]

> Once they received the payment, the hackers provided the operator with a decrypting tool to restore its disabled computer network. The tool was so slow that the company continued using its own backups to help restore the system, one of the people familiar with the company’s efforts said.

It's hard to get the full story from a single article, and larger publications like the Washington Post tend to focus on the most recent statements from federal agencies and corporations rather than details that you and I find more interesting. Sometimes I wish that newspapers would do more of a synopsis of news stories a month or so after the fact to give more context and "lessons learned" or "what impact has this had?". I would prefer that much more to the "breaking news" approach.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-13/colonial-...