As ransomware attacks are on the rise now, a new giant company has been attacked by them. A Malaysian media giant called Media Prima Bhd was attacked by a ransomware scam and now the attackers are asking for $6.3 million USD worth in Bitcoin (BTC) to give the access back to the company.

The ransomware attacked the company last Thursday, November 8, according to The Edge Markets, which has reported on the story first. The attackers asked for 1,000 BTC to give access to the email system of the company after the breach.

It looks like the media company did not confirm the attack but it was reported that they would not pay for the ransom and that the company simply migrated to G Suite, a Google product, after their email was hacked.

The company owns four TV stations, four radio station and three national newspapers, so it was sure to have suffered a heavy blow, but it looks like they simply decided for the cheaper way out of this mess. It is also not clear whether they decided to call the police or not.

One of the main reasons why ransomware is so popular right now is mostly because it is so lucrative, especially when you target companies instead of individuals. According to a cybersecurity company called Sophos, the SamSam ransomware, a very popular type of this malware, has generated over $6 million USD for its creators in the last three years.

Some of the victims include the Port of San Diego, in California, which prompted the U. S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to investigate the case together with the U. S. Department of Homeland Security and the U. S. Coast Guard.

While most companies do not pay the ransomware, especially in high profile cases like this one, many smaller and medium-sized companies generate most of the profit for these cases.

In fact, not paying when you are a high profile company is pretty much the main attitude. It makes sense. The payments for the extortion are generally so big that it makes no sense at all to pay them because the information that was being held is simply not that much important when you consider how much money the attackers ask for.

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