In July 2019, the United States Conference of Mayors unanimously adopted a resolution not to pay any more ransom demands to hackers following a ransomware attack. Cybersecurity experts heralded the decision, and numerous companies have also taken a stance that a ransom should never be paid – as doing so will only likely result in future attacks from bad actors.
Last month, Twitter essentially ignored the calls for a ransom to be paid after data from hundreds of millions of users was stolen following a breach. This week, the account details of some 200 million records were then posted on a hacker forum for free. Some of the popular and known names and entities include Sundar Pichai, Donald Trump Jr., SpaceX, CBS Media, the NBA, and the World Health Organization.