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