The ransom virus continues to harvest millions of dollars from Bitcoin by targeting and locking sensitive data and information for companies and institutions.

Recently, CWT, one of the largest travel companies in the United States, paid $4.5 million in bitcoin to hackers who infiltrated the company’s system, stealing sensitive data.

It is unclear whether customer information has also been compromised.

Reuters reports that a bitcoin wallet owned by the hacker received 414 bitcoins on July 28 as a ransom payment.

At current prices, this ransom is worth more than $4.8 million.

According to the report, hackers infected CWT’s system with a ransomware called “Ragnar Locker” that encrypted the entire system, making it accessible only to hackers.

Read:The ICON project enters the world of decentralized finance (DeFi) with this new update…Details here

The criminals claimed to have disabled 30,000 computers, but the company later said that this number was exaggerated

But the damage affected the company and led it to shut down its systems.

quoted Reuters About CWT:

We can confirm that after temporarily shutting down our systems as a precaution, our systems are back online and the glitch is now gone.

The investigation is still at an early stage, we have no indication that personally identifiable information / customer and traveler information has been compromised.

In the ransom note, the hackers claimed that they stole 2TB of CWT data, including billing files, financial reports, security documents and personal data of employees, such as email addresses and salary information.

They also claimed to have information about clients such as AXA Equitable, Abbot Laboratories, AIG, Amazon, Boston Scientific, Facebook, J&J, SONOCO, Estee Lauder and many more.

According to a Reuters report, CWT immediately notified US law enforcement and European data protection authorities.

The hackers initially demanded $10 million in bitcoin to recover the CWT files or delete all stolen data, but the company, which has been hit hard by the coronavirus, acquiesced in paying the $4.5 million.

Read:The co-founder of the Ethereum network is preparing to launch his new project with a valuation of 1.2 billion dollars

CWT, formerly known as “Carlson Wagonlit Travel”, is the fifth largest travel company in the United States of America.

CWT, which says it services 33% of companies on the S&P 500 stock index, says it generated $1.5 billion in revenue in 2019.

Ransomware attacks are reportedly costing companies billions of dollars in bitcoin.

Read also:

How to protect bitcoin and cryptocurrency away from hackers and hackers

Seven ways to protect privacy on the Internet… Get to know them