LOS ANGELES—A Los Angeles hospital paid a ransom of about $17,000 to hackers who infiltrated and disabled its computer network because paying was in the best interest of the hospital and the most efficient way to solve the problem, the medical center’s chief executive said Wednesday.
Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center paid the demanded ransom of 40 bitcoins—currently worth $16,664 dollars—after the network infiltration that began Feb. 5, CEO Allen Stefanek said in a statement.
The FBI is investigating the attack, often called “ransomware,” where hackers encrypt a computer network’s data to hold it “hostage,” providing a digital decryption key to unlock it for a price.
“The quickest and most efficient way to restore our systems and administrative functions was to pay the ransom and obtain the decryption key,” Stefanek said. “In the best interest of restoring normal operations, we did this.”
Ransomware attacks can happen to everyone from individuals to large institutions.
Bitcoins, the online currency that is hard to trace, is becoming the preferred way for hackers collect a ransom, FBI Special Agent Thomas Grasso, who is part of the government’s efforts to fight malicious software including ransomware, told The Associated Press last year.
During 2013, the number of attacks each month rose from 100,000 in January to 600,000 in December, according to a 2014 report by Symantec, the maker of antivirus software.
