About 1.1 million US dollars in bitcoins has agreed to pay South Korean hosting company Nayana to cybercriminals who using a cryptographic virus blocked 150 company-owned servers. As a result of the attack, almost 3.5 thousand client sites were inaccessible, the edition of The Korea Herald reports with reference to the statement of Nayana.

Experts in the field of information security believe that by their actions the company will push other hackers who are looking for easy money, intensify attacks on Korea. But in Nayana they say that the company has no other way out.

"We negotiated with hackers and now we are preparing money to buy bitcoins to restore the work of encrypted servers," said the head of the hosting company Hwang Chil-hong,.

In an interview with a local newspaper, he noted that he understands perfectly well: it is against the law to pay ransom. To go to the deal was decided only because otherwise the company puts in jeopardy hundreds of thousands of people working for its clients, explained the general director. According to the source, Nayana services are mostly used by small organizations and start-ups.

"The decision by Nayana creates a very bad precedent and threatens the risk of hacking of other hosting companies in the country," warns Shin Dae-kyu, head of the Internet Incident Response Unit of Korea Internet & Security Agency, KISA).

In addition, there are no guarantees that having received money hackers will restore data on the servers.

"Negotiations with extortionists are the worst decision. If the attackers do not decrypt the data, the company will not be able to do anything, "said Lim Jong-in, a professor of cyber defense at Seoul University in Koryo.

The expert added that the authorities should not consider the incident as a private incident and called for every effort to find intruders and prevent further attacks.

In the Internet Security Agency, Korea announced that they will begin research into the recovery of encrypted data in order to reduce the damage from cyber-extortion. Also in KISA they added that they plan to join the Europol project No More Ransom ("No More Ransoms"), in which the victims of extortionists can use the updated database of free decryptor programs for decrypting files.