Pay and embolden ransomware criminals or lose precious data?

ROBERT Gren was working from home on a Friday when, all of a sudden, his laptop stopped working.

What he initially thought was just a kink in his computer's software was in fact part of a global ransomware attack that has affected more than 200,000 computers and caused untold havoc from China to Britain.

Now, Mr Gren and the thousands of other victims worldwide face an agonising choice: Either hand over the ransom - a figure that has climbed to US$600 for each affected machine - by a deadline on Friday, or potentially lose their digital information, including personal photos, hospital patients' records and other priceless data, forever.