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