Victims Call Hackers’ Bluff as Ransomware Deadline Nears -
By PAUL MOZUR and MARK SCOTTMAY 19, 2017
With the clock ticking on whether a global hacking attack would wipe out his data, Bolton Jiang had no intention of paying a 21st-century ransom.
“Average students can’t afford that.”
Mikko Hypponen, chief risk officer at F-Secure, said the overall amount of ransom
that had been paid remained relatively low because large organizations — often with detailed data retrieval plans — had been the main victims of the attack.
As victims faced an agonizing choice on Friday over whether to pay or risk losing their data, cybersecurity experts said
that they had developed a potential way to decrypt individual machines without having to hand over the ransom.
In Britain, whose National Health Service was one of the largest organizations affected by
the ransomware, some medical institutions were still struggling to get back on their feet.
According to law enforcement agencies, paying could leave victims vulnerable to being targeted again,
and it also presents a challenge for people affected who have never used Bitcoin before.
“There is no solution to it.”
Tens of thousands of computer users around the world faced the same dilemma on Friday, their
last chance to pay the anonymous hackers behind the ransomware attack known as WannaCry.