An elite French police unit is said to be negotiating with hackers demanding a seven-figure ransom after paralysing the computer system of a Paris region hospital, reports The Times.
Le Parisien newspaper said the Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN), the French military police unit that specialises in terrorism, hostage-taking and other such crimes, was involved in round-the-clock talks with the hackers on encrypted platforms.
The daily said police had managed to negotiate the ransom demand down from an initial €10 million to €1 million.
In such cases, hackers generally demand payment of a ransom to decrypt or unlock the computers they have targeted.
Officially, the police officers are buying time while cybersecurity experts seek to combat the ransomware introduced into the hospital’s computer system. The French authorities say they will not pay any ransom at all. However, the country has a long history of paying to free French hostages while insisting that it would never do any such thing.
The 1,000-bed South Francilien Hospital Centre (CHSF) in Corbeil-Essonnes was hit last week when hackers introduced malicious software into its digital systems, preventing staff from accessing content on computers.