Los Angeles Valley College Pays Ransom To Hackers

[TexasTowelie]

The cyberattack struck Los Angeles Valley College late last month, disrupting email, voice mail and computer systems at the public community college in Southern California. Then, school officials found a ransom note.

The missive advised the college that its electronic files had been encrypted and that the files could only be unlocked with a “private key.” The attackers would supply the key after receiving payment in the valuable digital currency known as bitcoin, which can be used anonymously without a centralized bank.

“You have just 7 days to send us the BitCoin after 7 days we will remove your private keys and it’s impossible to recover your files,” the attackers warned, according to a copy of the note obtained by The Washington Post.

Leaders of the Los Angeles Community College District decided to pay the ransom.

“In consultation with district and college leadership, outside cybersecurity experts and law enforcement, a payment of $28,000 was made by the District,” Francisco C. Rodriguez, the district’s chancellor, said in a statement on Jan. 6. “It was the assessment of our outside cybersecurity experts that making a payment would offer an extremely high probability of restoring access to the affected systems, while failure to pay would virtually guarantee that data would be lost.”

Read more: http://www.vnews.com/This-college-just-paid-a-$28-000-ransom-in-bitcoin-to-cyberattackers-7506243

[pinboy3niner]

1. Interesting

The school reportedly had a cyber insurance policy that paid the hackers off.

I did a semester there in '72. In those days the administration's biggest worry was student antiwar protests shutting classes down.

More than 30 years later, after the '04 election, I saw John Kerry speak there with Antonio Villaraigosa and a slew of prominent CA Dems in support of Villaraigosa's mayoral campaign.