UK Companies Buy Up Bitcoins As Ransom Money While Canada University Pays Up
According to a cyber-security survey, 33% of UK companies are buying Bitcoin in anticipation of ransomware attacks. This comes after a Canadian university paid 20,000 Canadian dollars in Bitcoin for the encryption keys to their data this week. Canadian university ransomware attack. More than 100 of the computers at the University of Calgary had been infected with the ransomware, causing email and other files to become encrypted. After their IT department spent countless hours trying to find a solution to the attack, it was resolved that they would pay the ransom money of CAD $20,000 (USD....
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A Canadian university has paid bitcoin to malicious hackers to restore its computer systems after it became the subject of a cyberattack that denied access to its data. The University of Calgary paid a ransom amounting to $20,000 Canadian dollars worth of bitcoins in order to obtain the keys or methods of decryption to restore its data. Linda Dalgetty, the school’s vice-president of finances and services, said in a message released on the UT website that the cyberattack, which crippled multiple systems on May 28, used ransomware, which locks or encrypts computer networks until a ransom is....
BitSent is one of the first companies to open bitcoin ATMs in Canada and is currently expanding its terminals to locations in Vancouver, Surrey, and Burnaby. Currently, the company has 11 bitcoin ATMs in operation across the country and is hoping to add more terminals internationally. In particular, BitSent will add more ATMs in the British Columbia's Simon Fraser University (SFU) campus bookstores, which is the first university bookstore to accept bitcoin as payment. "As the founder of SFU's Bitcoin club I'm proud that SFU has the first university administered bookstore in the world to....
Hackers creating online malware attacks typically demand bitcoin ransom, as this prevents authorities from tracking where the payments went. Bitcoin transactions are anonymous and irreversible, making these the usual mode of ransom required by scammers. Just recently, a company based in Brisbane suffered internal data theft and was demanded to pay bitcoin ransom to its hackers. Initially, the company refused to make the payments but the hackers escalated their threats. Bitcoin Ransom Payment. Eventually, the Australian firm gave in to the demands and gave the hackers the amount they wanted....
Ottawa-based Carleton University in Canada is the latest institutional target of ransomware hackers who struck the university’s IT network, potentially compromising any Windows-based computer with access to the university’s main network. Encryption-based ransomware fundamentally blocks access to victims’ files on local storage media and only allows access when a decryption key is entered, typically delivered in return for a ransom. The institution’s IT department confirmed the ransomware attack upon its network with a post on social media yesterday at 11 AM local time: The IT department is....
The rise of ransomware attacks is giving banks a cause for concern as they now have to buy and keep cryptocurrency in the event it is needed to pay criminals when their files are held to ransom. In an interview with Business Insider, Malwarebytes CEO, Marcin Kleczynski, said the situation has become so aggressive to the business environment in the last six to 12 months that companies from 25 people to 250,000 people are getting hit with ransomware. In the past year, the number of such recorded attacks – and the call for bitcoin-related payment for ransom – has been worrying. The Rise of....