An anonymous tip-off to BBC News enabled them to watch in real-time as an American medical university attempted to negotiate with the hackers who had infected its systems with ransomware.
As reporter Joe Tidy describes, the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) was attacked by the notorious NetWalker ransomware on the first day of June.
A ransom demand left by the gang directed the university dedicated to medical research to a payment page on the dark web, where they could find an FAQ, an offer of a “free” sample of a decrypted file (proving decryption was possible), and the ability – just like so many legitimate websites – to have a live chat with a support operator.
NetWalker chat message. Source: BBC News
Of course, negotiating the safe recovery of your encrypted files is so much more stressful when the webpage also contains a countdown timer, threatening to either double the ransom demand or publish stolen data onto the internet if time runs out.
Six hours after asking, the University of California San Francisco must have been relieved to have been given more time, and for news of the attack to be removed from NetWalker’s public website.
NetWalker chat message. Source: BBC News
However, the hackers demanded $3 million, and were less than impressed when whoever was at the UCSF’s end of the conversation begged them to accept $780,000 citing the “financially devastating” damage caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. UCSF h ..
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