Firms That Promised Ransomware Decryption Almost Always Just Pay the Hackers

Proven Data Recovery of Elmsford, New York, regularly made ransom payments to SamSam hackers over more than a year, according to Jonathan Storfer, a former employee who dealt with them. Another U.S. company, Florida-based MonsterCloud, also professes to use its own data recovery methods but instead pays ransoms, sometimes without informing victims such as local law enforcement agencies, ProPublica has found. Storfer, who worked for Proven Data from March 2017 until September 2018, said in a series of interviews that the company not only paid ransoms to the SamSam hackers, but also developed a mutually beneficial relationship with them.

Source: features.propublica.org