LA college pays $28,000 ransom demand; new sophisticated Spora ransomware

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Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) is surely glad it had cybersecurity insurance as it was hit with ransomware on New Year’s Eve. It’s unclear how much of the $28,000 ransom will be recovered via insurance, but the college made the decision to pay.

A ransom note, left on one of the college’s servers, read:

You have 7 days to send us the BitCoin after 7 days we will remove your private keys and it’s impossible to recover your files

According to the college newspaper Valley Star, the ransom note also included step-by-step directions for how to purchase bitcoins and make the extortion payment, as well as a demo to test the decryption process. “Check our site, you can upload two encrypted files and we will decrypt your files as demo.”

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