online after Disney refused to meet hackers ' demandsAttack.Ransom. On 17 May , Softpedia 's Gabriela Vatu reported that two copies of Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead Men Tell No Tales had appeared on the popular ( and somewhat appropriate ) BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay . `` According to the information unearthed thus far , the hackers managed to get accessAttack.Databreachto the systems of Larson Studios in Hollywood , a company that handles additional dialogue recorded for movies . It seems that the copies they 've managed to get their hands on are in various stages of production and not exactly what you 'd expect from a full cinema-ready release . '' News of the extortion attempt first appeared in The Hollywood Reporter on 15 May when Bob Iger , CEO at Walt Disney , revealed the hackers had demandedAttack.Ransomthat Disney payAttack.Ransoma `` huge sum '' in Bitcoins to prevent them from leaking a then-undisclosed movie online . At the time , the attackers said they would release the film incrementally to netizens , first publishing clips lasting only a few minutes and slowly building up to 20-minute segments . Iger said Disney decided to not payAttack.Ransomthe attackers and was working with federal law enforcement to investigate the theft of one of its productions . It 's unclear who exactly perpetrated the leakAttack.Databreach- if indeed the files really are of the movie . Even so , a potential candidate is The Dark Overlord , a group of hackers who released the fifth season of Orange Is the New Black after Netflix refused to meet its ransom demandsAttack.Ransomback in April 2017 . Around that time , the hacking gang , which has also extortedAttack.Ransomnon-film entities in the past , tweeted out that it had stolenAttack.Databreachcontent from a number of other media companies . It did not name Walt Disney by name , though it did point to FOX , ABC , and others . Who is next on the list ? FOX , IFC , NAT GEO , and ABC . Oh , what fun we 're all going to have . We 're not playing any games anymore . While Disney and Netflix continue to work with the FBI in tracking down The Dark Overlord , someone has already removed the two copies of what claimed to be the Pirates of the Caribbean film from The Pirate Bay . The hackers could release the movies again . Or they might be focusing on their next target . While movie-goers might celebrate a leak of the movie , media companies like Walt Disney do n't want viewers gaining early access to their content . That 's why organizations should take the opportunity to conduct some security awareness training with their employees . This effort should include phishingAttack.Phishingsimulations and reviewing the security readiness of companies along their supply chains . Article updated 19 May 2017 . None of the files made available as downloadable torrents have been confirmed to contain footage of the movie . For more discussion on the issue , make sure to listen to this recent episode of the `` Smashing Security '' podcast . Your browser does not support this audio element .
University College London , one of the world 's leading universities , has been hit by a major cyber-attack . The university describes it as a "ransomware" attackAttack.Ransom, such as last month 's cyber-attack which threatened NHS computer systems . The attack was continuing on Thursday , with access to online networks being restricted . The university has warned staff and students of the risk of data loss and `` very substantial disruption '' . University College London ( UCL ) is a `` centre of excellence in cyber-security research '' , a status awarded by the GCHQ intelligence and monitoring service . The central London university , ranked last week in the world 's top 10 , says that a `` widespread ransomware attackAttack.Ransom`` began on Wednesday . It was first blamed on so-called `` phishing '' emails , with links to destructive software . But later the university suggested it was more likely to be from contact with a `` compromised '' website , where clicking on a pop-up page might have spread a malware infection . Ransomware attacksAttack.Ransomare where computer systems are locked and threatened with damaging software unless paymentsAttack.Ransomare made . Students and staff were warned that `` ransomware damages files on your computer and on shared drives where you save files '' and were told not to open any suspicious attachments . The university says that it believes the risk of further infection has been contained , but it is urging staff and students to help with efforts to reduce any `` further spread of this malware '' . Universities , which often carry out commercially sensitive research , have become frequent targets for cyber-attacks . `` However , what makes this attack interesting is the timing , '' said Graham Rymer , an ethical hacker and research associate at the University of Cambridge . `` Hackers tend to target people who will be desperate to get accessAttack.Databreachto their data and are , therefore , more likely to pay the ransomAttack.Ransom. `` Currently there are a lot of students who will be putting the final touches to their dissertations , so it could be that they were the targets . '' Mr Rymer said UCL seemed to have responded well to the attack and had `` locked it down pretty well '' . `` One thing UCL did is to quickly switch all drives in the system to `` read-only '' following the attack , which essentially prevented the malware from doing real damage . '' Mr Rymer said UCL may not have been the only intended target as he had seen other businesses facing the same malware . Last month , the National Health Service in England and Scotland was subject to a significant ransomware cyber-attackAttack.Ransom, as part of a global wave of attacks .