University of California SF Pays Ransom After Medical Servers Hit

University of California SF Pays Ransom After Medical Servers Hit
As one of at least three universities hit in June, the school paid $1.14 million to cybercriminals following an attack on "several IT systems" in the UCSF School of Medicine.

The University of California San Francisco paid about $1.14 million to ransomware operators earlier this month after its malware compromised several important servers in the UCSF School of Medicine and encrypted them to prevent access, UCSF administrators stated on June 26.


The crypto-ransomware attacks, which have been attributed to the NetWalker group, also reportedly hit Michigan State University and Columbia College of Chicago. UCSF, which has pursued a substantial amount of research on coronavirus and COVID-19, stated that the attacks had not affected that research, nor had an impact on the operations of its medical center and patient care.


However, the ransomware had affected "a limited number of servers" in the medical school, the university said in a statement.


"The data that was encrypted is important to some of the academic work we pursue as a university serving the public good," the statement said. "We therefore made the difficult decision to pay some portion of the ransom, approximately $1.14 million, to the individuals behind the malware attack in exchange for a tool to unlock the encrypted data and the return of the data they obtained."


UCSF's information technology department caught the attack in progress and "quarantined several IT systems within the School of Medicine as a safety measure," preventing the attack from reaching the "core UCSF network," the university said in the June 26 statement.


The attack and its million-dollar consequences show that organizations must be able to recognize attacks and ..

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