This is a story that ends well. Victim of a cyberattack and forced to pay a large sum in bitcoins to hackers, a Dutch university will be able to get its hands on its money… which has seen its value double.
All’s well that ends well for the University of Maastricht, in the south of the Netherlands. In 2019, the establishment had been the victim of a cyberattack and had paid the equivalent of €200,000 in bitcoins to hackers to break this impasse. But the sum, which has since been recovered by justice, has doubled in value. Thus, the establishment will in the end obtain two and a half times the amount which had been withdrawn from it, that is to say approximately 500,000 €.
“The criminals had encrypted hundreds of Windows servers and backup systems, preventing 25,000 students and employees from accessing scientific data, the library and mail”explains the daily From Volkskrant (paid item). Students could not take exams or even work on their thesis, the newspaper continued.
The university had cracked to recover certain data
The university had ended up giving in to the hackers so as not to lose certain data and to unlock its computer systems. These had been locked by ransomware (ransomware), a type of malware that hackers unlock against the payment of a certain amount of money.
In 2020, justice managed to get their hands on an account based in Ukraine which contained various cryptocurrencies, including the sum paid by the University of Maastricht. The establishment indicated that the sum recovered would be paid to a “fund intended to help students in financial difficulty”.