Web host agrees to pay $1m after it’s hit by Linux-targeting ransomware

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

A Web-hosting service recently agreed to pay $1 million to a ransomware operation that encrypted data stored on 153 Linux servers and 3,400 customer websites, the company said recently.

The South Korean Web host, Nayana, said in a blog post published last week that initial ransom demands were for five billion won worth of Bitcoin, which is roughly $4.4 million. Company negotiators later managed to get the fee lowered to 1.8 billion won and ultimately landed a further reduction to 1.2 billion won, or just over $1 million. An update posted Saturday said Nayana engineers were in the process of recovering the data. The post cautioned that the recovery was difficult and would take time.

"It is very frustrating and difficult, but I am really doing my best, and I will do my best to make sure all servers are normalized," a representative wrote, according to a Google translation.

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