Security News > 2020 > June > University of California San Francisco pays ransomware gang $1.14m as BBC publishes 'dark web negotiations'
A California university which is dedicated solely to public health research has paid a $1.14m ransom to a criminal gang in the hopes of regaining access to its data.
The University of California San Francisco paid out in the apparently successful hope that the Netwalker group would send it a decryption utility for its illicitly encrypted files, which it referred to as "Data ... important to some of the academic work we pursue as a university serving the public good".
While the university is carrying out research on COVID-19, it said in a public statement that the attack did not affect that.
It also noted that patient medical records and patient care were not affected - the university has a teaching hospital attached, the San Francisco Medical Center.
The Register has asked UCSF for comment about the ransom payments as well as about its data backup processes.