Canadian university buckles and pays $20k in bitcoin to hackers

[the_poet]

Yet another Bitcoin horror story

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/06/08/canadian-university-buckles-pays-20k-bitcoin-hackers/

[pereira4]

If you are so smart to call yourself an university teacher, one should expect that they know the importance to hire good people in the IT section that are knowledgeable on Bitcoin, ransomware, and security in general.

Honestly ramsonware only happens if you are doing idiotic stuff with the computer. If you are cautious and take basic security measures you will not get infected by ramsonware.

[greyhawk]

If you are so smart to call yourself an university teacher, one should expect that they know the importance to hire good people in the IT section that are knowledgeable on Bitcoin, ransomware, and security in general.

Honestly ramsonware only happens if you are doing idiotic stuff with the computer. If you are cautious and take basic security measures you will not get infected by ramsonware.

It only takes one person in the company or university to slip up and open an email attachment infected with ransomware. This is why ransomware is so common.

[unamis76]

This yet again... Reminds me that thread with the article saying companies are stocking up on Bitcoin to pay for data rescue to attackers. If people had backups, there would be no need to fund hackers this way and they would simply stop. If companies/schools can afford to pay this amount of money to hackers and/or "stockpile" with Bitcoin, they can afford trained staff that can secure their network and keep daily backups. Hard drives are also quite inexpensive comparing to paying attackers... But it's their money, so they do whatever they want It seems people prefer to be sorry than safe. Wish I had large pockets like this University

[greyhawk]

This yet again... Reminds me that thread with the article saying companies are stocking up on Bitcoin to pay for data rescue to attackers. If people had backups, there would be no need to fund hackers this way and they would simply stop. If companies/schools can afford to pay this amount of money to hackers and/or "stockpile" with Bitcoin, they can afford trained staff that can secure their network and keep daily backups. Hard drives are also quite inexpensive comparing to paying attackers... But it's their money, so they do whatever they want It seems people prefer to be sorry than safe. Wish I had large pockets like this University

Ransomware will encrypt the backups too if it can. If the backups are stored on a server or network drive they are toast. Best way is to backup using tapes, which few organizations do in the age of the cloud.

[aso118]

Yet another Bitcoin horror story

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/06/08/canadian-university-buckles-pays-20k-bitcoin-hackers/

It is not a Bitcoin horror story, it is just a horror story.
I expect university systems to be more secure than this.

[Kprawn]

If you are so smart to call yourself an university teacher, one should expect that they know the importance to hire good people in the IT section that are knowledgeable on Bitcoin, ransomware, and security in general.

Honestly ramsonware only happens if you are doing idiotic stuff with the computer. If you are cautious and take basic security measures you will not get infected by ramsonware.

You will still get infected, but with expert help and good incremental backup systems, the downtime will be reduced and the impact of this threat will be almost zero downtime. I think the majority of

these guys, did not do frequent backups at all, and then have to pay these people to retrieve their data. Why would you pay, if you had recent backups? We have offsite backups and we have several

hard copies of the archived data. Just do the backups regularly and you will be fine... 

[criptix]

They only attack vector that wont ever be fixed is called humans

[Cuntabula]

Honestly ramsonware rape only happens if you are doing idiotic stuff with the computer dressing like a fucking slut. If you are cautious and take basic security measures you will not get infected by ramsonware. raped.

FTFY. Great attitude you got there, buddy, "Put better locks on your doors, and our son won't keep breaking into your house." How about no?
Banning bitcoin outright is much simpler than regulating it, get caught with bitcoin software on your computer? Same as child porn, problem solved
Posting like yours, that's what people judge bitcoiners by. Thanks for making us look like assholes.

[Red-Apple]

If you are so smart to call yourself an university teacher, one should expect that they know the importance to hire good people in the IT section that are knowledgeable on Bitcoin, ransomware, and security in general.

Honestly ramsonware only happens if you are doing idiotic stuff with the computer. If you are cautious and take basic security measures you will not get infected by ramsonware.

It only takes one person in the company or university to slip up and open an email attachment infected with ransomware. This is why ransomware is so common.

yes that is true but the files that are important like in this case the students profiles and other information should be kept on a server with restricted access so that one random person who is stupid and gets infected doesn't infect the server too.

also there should be always a backup of these things stored in a separate place which [good] universities do.

[franky1]

give it a week and one of their own pupils will probably use the script to make the ransomware. load it onto his colleges servers and ransom the college himself

[mobnepal]

I think the one who hacked the college server with ransomeware is one of their own student who really like cryptography. But even before bitcoin there were lots of ransomeware events in internet world, so i don't think bitcoin is responsible for all this ransomeware attempts.

[Junko]

How ironic would it be if this fiasco actually helped increase bitcoin awareness in that university leading to more adoption there.

[patronis]

How does this work, you pay the ransom and get a password that unlocks your computer?

[Assmaster2000]

give it a week and one of their own pupils will probably use the script to make the ransomware. load it onto his colleges servers and ransom the college himself

Bitcoin democratizes extortion, now even a child can extort his school!
I love you, Blockchain technology. Is there anything you can't do?!

[greyhawk]

How does this work, you pay the ransom and get a password that unlocks your computer?

Yes. Your important files are encrypted and the only way to decrypt them is using the password.

[Bit_Happy]

How does this work, you pay the ransom and get a password that unlocks your computer?

Yes. Your important files are encrypted and the only way to decrypt them is using the password.

Proper, frequent backups would solve the problem. You would only lose the most recently updated changes, since the last backup.

[greyhawk]

Proper, frequent backups would solve the problem. You would only lose the most recently updated changes, since the last backup.

As long as the ransomware doesn't encrypt the backups too.

If you are backing up "to the cloud", to a server or to a networked drive, then goodbye backups. And almost every large organization is primarily relying on one of those for backups.

[unamis76]

Ransomware will encrypt the backups too if it can. If the backups are stored on a server or network drive they are toast. Best way is to backup using tapes, which few organizations do in the age of the cloud.

I assume that someone capable of running a big University infrastructure is aware of that and stores backups in a separate, preferably offline server. But yes, this can happen, but backups in a separate server are guaranteed to make things better and easier when being attacked.

They only attack vector that wont ever be fixed is called humans

True

give it a week and one of their own pupils will probably use the script to make the ransomware. load it onto his colleges servers and ransom the college himself

That would be absolutely despicable.

How ironic would it be if this fiasco actually helped increase bitcoin awareness in that university leading to more adoption there.

Haha, it would be amazing

[Wendigo]

give it a week and one of their own pupils will probably use the script to make the ransomware. load it onto his colleges servers and ransom the college himself

Yeah mate it's very shocking how colleges and universities hire so incompetent IT staff sometimes who can't even ensure minimum level essential security of their network which completely boggles my mind. But I think it's highly possible some teacher downloaded some malicious file or something probably from a fake email sent to the university's inbox. You will be amazed how computer-illiterate some people may be regardless of teaching at a university. But surely this news will bring the attention of hackers to other colleges and universities because they are very easy pickings for ransomware attacks. Plus I have read about universities already gathering Bitcoin funds to hand out to hackers in the event of getting compromised so yeah Bitcoin hackers and thieves have already won the battle.