University of Utah paid $457,000 to those behind a ransomware attack

By Duncan Riley for SiliconANGLE
Monday, August 24, 2020

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Arguably it’s one thing to pay a ransom to gain access to critical information that has been encrypted and not backed up. It is an entirely different level of stupidity to pay a ransom to cybercriminals on the belief that it will prompt them delete the stolen data.

“The decision to pay a fairly important ransom will likely bolster sophisticated attacks against U.S. universities that are already surging,” Ilia Kolochenko, founder and chief executive officer of security company ImmuniWeb, told SiliconANGLE. “Numerous examples from the past convincingly demonstrate that hackers will not necessarily honor their nebulous promises and release the data even after being fully paid.”

Worse, he added, “given the division of labor and collaboration between different gangs on the global cybercrime market, the gang behind the ransomware attack is usually not the only one with access to the stolen data. Thus, by accepting a payment from the victim, they have no factual means to guarantee that their accomplices won’t suddenly leak the data for fun or for profit.” Read Full Article