NetWalker Hackers Hit University Of Utah With Ransomware Attack

NetWalker hackers, a popular hacking group is a group behind a Ransomware attack that hit the University of Utah requesting a bitcoin payment of $500,000 so let’s find out more in the latest Bitcoin scam news.

The University of Utah was the latest victim in a ransomware attack by the NetWalker hackers group and they ended up paying the hackers $500,000 because they wanted to prevent the data leak. The university paid the ransomware to avoid having its data leaker and it became the latest victim in the ransomware attacks that target higher education.

In a statement posted on the website, the university revealed that it was the target of the ransomware attack on July 19^th as the hackers only managed to encrypt only 0.02% of the data stored on the servers according to the university. The university also didn’t specify whether they paid in cash or crypto and hasn’t responded to a request for comment yet but one cybersecurity expert believes that the hackers demanded Bitcoin.

The hackers zeroed in on the Social and Behavioral Science services of the college where the students and employee data is stored. After the crooks threatened to leak the stolen data online, the university decided to pay over $457,059:

“After careful consideration, the university decided to work with its cyber insurance provider to pay a fee to the ransomware attacker. This was done as a proactive and preventive step to ensure information was not released on the internet.”

The university added that the cyber-insurance policy covered a part of the ransom as well:

 “No tuition, grant, donation, state or taxpayer funds were used to pay the ransom.”

The threat analyst Brett Callow from the cyber-security firm Emisosft said that the operators of NetWalker were likely behind the attack. The group targeted multiple educational establishments over the past few weeks including Columbia College Chicago, Michigan State University, and The City University of Seattle.  NetWalker did pretty well for itself and pulled more than $25 million from ransomware payments since March, according to McAfee.

McAfee researchers said:

 “discovered a large sum of bitcoins linked to NetWalker which suggest its extortion efforts are effective and that many victims have had no option other than to succumb to its criminal demands.”