University of Calgary pays $16K to recover data held hostage by ransomware attackers

2016-06-08T13:05:00-04:00

Canada's University of Calgary paid almost $16,000 ($20,000 Canadian, ~£10,800) to recover crucial data that has been held hostage for more than a week by crypto ransomware attackers. The ransom was disclosed on Wednesday morning in a statement issued by University of Calgary officials. It said university IT personnel had made progress in isolating the unnamed ransomware infection and restoring affected parts of the university network.

"It went on to warn that there's no guarantee paying the controversial ransom will lead to the lost data being recovered."

Attacks with ransomware have become increasingly frequent. As the name suggests, ransomware allows hackers to take computers hostage until the user pays up. The increasing prevalence of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has facilitated the rise in such attacks.

As the University of Calgary's Vice President stated, ""We are conducting world class research daily and we don’t know what we don’t know in terms of who’s been impacted and the last thing we want to do is lose someone’s life’s work."

For more on that state of privacy in our digital era, check out these links:

Archinect - News

University of Calgary pays $16K to recover data held hostage by ransomware attackers