Another victim of a cryptographer: the American school had to pay $ 8,500 to the developers of the encryption virus

The administration of the American school from Horry County (South Carolina, USA) had to pay $ 8,500 to the developers of the cryptographer who hit the school servers. This ransomware infiltrated the school’s computer network last week, hitting the 25 servers that stored all the information about the students. Immediately after this happened, the staff of the institution shut down all the servers to prevent further spread of the virus. Naturally, school services stopped working.

The cryptographer requested 0.8 bitcoins from the computer, it turned out exactly 20 bitcoins. School representatives said the virus had penetrated the old server with outdated software and hardware. A complaint was filed with the FBI, but, like in all similar cases, the Bureau could do little to help.

After the IT specialists, who were called upon to help, could not do anything, the school administration decided to pay. And on February 15, the payment went to the attackers. Local newspapers also reported problems when making a payment, because the school first had to look for a way to convert dollars into bitcoins, with all costs indicated in the standard documents.
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Almost immediately after the payment, the administration received a key to decrypt the files, and was able to restore all services and files. Even before the network became infected with a cryptographer, the school began to look for a company that could protect the institution’s network. As you can see, the administration failed to find protection on time.

I recall that recently, one of the hospitals in Hollywood had to pay $ 17,000 to developers of similar software, since ransomware completely blocked the work of the institution’s network. The encryption virus that infected the institution’s computer network encrypted all files on infected PCs, and the key that allows decrypting the files is known only to hackers.

Attackers who create this kind of ransomware do not always send the keys after the victim makes a payment. But in this case everything worked out, and the work of the school network and services is now proceeding as before.