WASHINGTON (AP) � FBI Director Christopher Wray says the bureau discourages ransomware payments to hacking groups even as major companies in the past month have participated in multimillion-dollar transactions aimed at getting their systems back online.
Wray tells the House Judiciary Committee that there are a number of reasons why FBI policy frowns on such payments. For one, it may encourage additional cyberattacks. And it may not result in victims getting their information back.
Both and meat processing company have revealed that they paid multimillion-dollar ransoms.
In ransomware attacks, hackers lock up and encrypt a victim’s data and demand a payment in order to return it. They have proliferated in scale over the past year.
