University of California San Francisco hit by ransomware, pays $1.14 million ransom

The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) is reporting a ransomware attack by the Netwalker group. The attack, which occurred earlier in the month, encrypted data on the School of Medicine's servers, making it temporarily inaccessible. The hackers initially demanded $3 million, but after negotiations on the dark web, UCSF agreed to pay 116.4 bitcoins, equivalent to $1.14 million, to receive a decryption tool.

The exposed data and the number of potentially impacted individuals is not disclosed.

UCSF stated that there is no current evidence suggesting that patient medical records were exposed during the attack. Additionally, the incident did not affect patient care delivery or COVID-19-related work. The university is working with the FBI on the investigation while simultaneously restoring the affected data.