I thought it was illegal to pay ransom to hackers. I guess it is legal or maybe it isn't very clear? I thought that there were certain conditions that the company had to check together with law enforcement so that at least the ransom money doesn't go to a hacker group that is on a government payments sanctions list.

Also, does anyone know the root cause of the attack? I read a rumor online (but it's not really confirmed anywhere) that it may have had to do with the common pattern of ShinyHunters where they use a vulnerability in a Salesforce Experience Cloud site. What is confirmed for sure is that the vulnterability involved the feature of Canvas called "Free-For-Teacher accounts".