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How hackers extorted $1.14m from a US university:
A leading medical-research institution working on a cure for Covid-19 has admitted it paid hackers a $1.14m (£910,000) ransom after a covert negotiation witnessed by BBC News.
The Netwalker criminal gang attacked University of California San Francisco (UCSF) on 1 June.
IT staff unplugged computers in a race to stop the malware spreading.
And an anonymous tip-off enabled BBC News to follow the ransom negotiations in a live chat on the dark web.
[...] At first glance, its dark-web homepage looks like a standard customer-service website, with a frequently asked questions (FAQ) tab, an offer of a "free" sample of its software and a live-chat option.
But there is also a countdown timer ticking down to a time when the hackers either double the price of their ransom, or delete the data they have scrambled with malware.
Also at Security Week.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 30 2020, @03:48AM (4 children)
I don't have a lot of baseline sympathy for a university that doesn't secure its systems properly; they are, after all, financially hollowing out the last couple and next several generations of American students for their own greed.
But if this was a lab there working on a cure for the Wuhan coronavirus, and the hackers were holding that data hostage, then the FBI and other relevant federal agencies should come down on the hackers like a ton of bricks. If they're non-state actors, the countries where they are located should cough them up to be tried for bio-terrorism. If they're state-sponsored, it's an act of war. Even if you don't fear the lethality of the virus, it has wrought enormous economic harm to the global economy and people's livelihoods everywhere, so finding a cure has become quite important for humanity.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Tuesday June 30 2020, @11:12AM (3 children)
I agree -- what the malware operators did here was absolutely appalling. It could reasonably be called a crime against humanity. They need to spend 30 years in prison for this.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 30 2020, @03:44PM (2 children)
How many years should the people who put Windows on the computers get?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Tuesday June 30 2020, @10:02PM
Easy. If it's Windows 10, then 10 years. If it's Windows 7, then only 7 years.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @10:35PM
640 years should be enough for any crime.