Last month, a major hospital agreed to pay $17,000 to a group ofcriminal hackers in order to regain control of its computernetwork. Actually, the hospital paid 40 bitcoins, the opensource digital currency demanded by the hackers.
In a statement shortly after the incident, Allen Stefanek,president of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, defended thedecision to play ball with the criminals.
“The quickest and most efficient way to restore our systems andadministrative functions was to pay the ransom and obtain thedecryption key,” he said in a Feb. 17 statement. “In the bestinterest of restoring normal operations, we did this.”
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