Hawai’i Community College folds, gives NoEscape the ransom

The Hawai’i Community College has confirmed that it complied with the ransom demands of the NoEscape group. The attackers are from the ransomware operation that successfully stole thousands of data from the academic institution.

The affected entity is an accredited public community college that runs two campuses in Hawaii and is part of the University of Hawai’i. The school is home to more than 50,000 students.

 

The NoEscape ransomware group attacked UH last month.

 

The new NoEscape ransomware group listed UH on its extortion website and threatened the institution that they would leak about 65 gigabytes worth of stolen data. Moreover, the group gave a week for UH to comply with their demands.

After the actors announced the attack, the University of Hawai’i explained that they had thoroughly considered all possible options to address the incident. Unfortunately, the academic institution has concluded that it will provide ransom to cybercriminals to protect the personal information of thousands of its students.

The university also explained that the reputation of the hackers is what urged them to decide since NoEscape is notorious for leaking the personal information of individuals stolen from infected networks if they do not receive what they want.

UH disclosed that they have worked with a third-party cybersecurity group, which aided them in negotiating with the attackers. Both parties decided to destroy all the information the actors acquired during the attack.

Subsequently, the ransomware group removed the University of Hawai’i from its data leak website. As of now, the restoration process of the damaged IT infrastructure of UH is ongoing. Researchers believe the NoEscape group assists UH with the restoration through their decryption key. Furthermore, researchers claimed that the repair could be completed in early August.

On the other hand, the 28,000 individuals affected by the ransomware attack will receive notification letters with instructions on enrolling in credit monitoring and identity theft protection services.

The University of Hawai’i is closely working with its other campuses and IT system admins to address potential bugs and employ additional security measures to prevent similar attacks from occurring again soon.