Checkout.com declined to pay a ransom after a hacker group claimed to have stolen company data, instead choosing to donate the equivalent amount to academic institutions researching cybercrime. Chief technology officer Mariano Albera said the payment services firm was contacted last week by ShinyHunters, which alleged it had obtained internal documents and demanded payment.
An investigation found that the attackers accessed a legacy third-party cloud file storage system that had not been properly decommissioned. The system contained internal operational documents and merchant onboarding materials from 2020 and earlier. Albera said the breach affected less than 25% of current merchant customers and did not involve Checkout.com’s live payment processing platform. The company said the attackers did not access card numbers or merchant funds.
Instead of negotiating, Checkout.com plans to donate the ransom amount — which was not disclosed — to Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Oxford’s Cyber Security Center to support research efforts aimed at combating cybercrime. Albera said the company intends to learn from the incident and invest in broader defensive measures.
The question of whether organisations should pay ransomware demands has gained renewed attention. Law enforcement agencies consistently advise against paying, citing the risk of encouraging further attacks and the lack of guarantee that criminals will supply valid decryption keys. A study in May reported that more than 70% of 1,000 affected companies chose to pay, but only 60% recovered their data with functional keys.
Governments are also shifting their policies. Australia now requires certain organisations to disclose ransomware payments, while the U.K. has proposed banning such payments for public-sector bodies. A coalition of 40 to 48 countries in the International Counter Ransomware Initiative has pledged not to pay, though without implementing legal prohibitions. Some jurisdictions already restrict payments when they would violate sanctions or anti-money laundering rules.
Featured image credits: Freepik
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