[E360]Cyberthieves Hold Hospital's Data For Ransom

Cyberthieves Hold Hospital's Data For Ransom

By Larry Greenemeier on February 23, 2016

What do you do when hackers kidnap[劫持] your data and hold it for ransom[赎金,赎身,赎回]?Hollywood Presbyterian[长老会的;长老制的] Medical Center in California recently faced that question. The hospital’s management decided it was worth forking over[1] $17,000 in bitcoin[比特币] cyber currency to regain access to their patient digital information and other data held hostage by a malicious software program[恶意软件程序].

[1]fork over

(idiomatic) To pay (implies lots of money)

支付;付出

If you fork something over to someone, for example money, you give it to them.

将 (某事物) 交给 (某人)

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Ransomware[勒索软件], as it has come be known, has been around for years, but this hospital case is perhaps the most egregious example of its use as part of a cyber attack.

▷egregious [ɪ'griːdʒəs]

often of ,  （错误等）极其严重的，极坏的，令人震惊的It was an egregious  for a  to show such .一位政界人士表现得如此无知，犯这种错误是极不应该的。

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The medical center issued a statement[1] saying that patient care was not compromised while their data was unavailable. Still, it’s unsettling[使人不安的;(消息)扰乱的] to hear that a hospital is shut out of parts of its own computer systems and unable to communicate electronically.

[1]发表声明

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Ransomware does its dirty work by encrypting files until a ransom payment releases the decryption key. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this case is that the hackers asked for only $17,000—not that much money to an institution that that pulls in hundreds of millions in annual revenue[1]. But it’s almost certain that future instances of ransomware attacks will involve more exorbitant demands.

[1]年收入

▷exorbitant [ɪg'zɔːbɪt(ə)nt]

Exorbitant  and , . are much too 

（价格、要求等）过分的，过高的，离谱的The  for  was exorbitant.晚餐的价格高得离谱。

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—Larry Greenemeier

From 60-Second Science