University Of Hawaii Paid Ransom To The NoEscape Gang To Recover The Data Of 28,000 Students
The University of Hawaii said it had to pay ransom to cyber criminals who stole the personal information of approximately 28,000 individuals from the Hawaiʻi Community College network.
The University of Hawaii on 20th June said that the Hawaii Community College was the target of a ransomware attack that targeted its network but did not impact other campuses.
The university said its information technology team immediately took steps to mitigate the ransomware attack and took the affected systems offline. The team also took additional steps to protect the parts of the network that weren’t affected by the incident.
“Hawaiʻi CC is the only UH campus identified in the attack by the group claiming responsibility. At this time, UH cybersecurity experts do not believe that other UH campuses have been impacted,” it said.
On June 19, a group of threat actors, going by the name “NoEscape”, reportedly listed the Hawaii Community College as a victim on its data leak site and threatened to publish around 65GB of data stolen from the community college.
The University of Hawaii in a press release on 26th July said that after carefully considering all aspects of the security incident, it decided to meet the ransom demand of the threat actors.
“After determining that the compromised data most likely contained the personal information of approximately 28,000 individuals, the University of Hawaiʻi made the difficult decision to negotiate with the threat actors in order to protect the individuals whose sensitive information might have been compromised.
“A significant consideration in this decision-making process was that the criminal entity responsible for the attack has a documented history of publicly posting the stolen personal information of individuals when agreement with the impacted entity was not reached. Working with an external team of cybersecurity experts, UH reached an agreement with the threat actors to destroy all of the information it illegally obtained,” it said.
After the ransom was paid, the NoEscape ransomware gang removed the University of Hawai’i from its data leak site.
The UH added that the restoration of the community college’s IT infrastructure is in progress. Though the wireless networks at all locations have been restored, the restoration of the wired network is expected to be completed by the week of August 14.
“Notification letters are being sent to approximately 28,000 individuals, which will include an offer of credit monitoring and identity theft protection services through Experian,” the University added.
