The staggering sum of US $75 million has reportedly been paid to a ransomware gang in what’s believed to be the biggest identified ransom cost made by a cyber assault sufferer since information started.
Researchers at Zscaler declare in a brand new report that the record-breaking determine was paid by an undisclosed Fortune 50 firm to the Darkish Angels ransomware group.
The reported cost virtually doubles the earlier file – $40 million paid by insurance coverage large CNA Monetary in 2021 after being locked out of its community by attackers utilizing the Phoenix Locker ransomware.
Darkish Angels, which emerged in Could 2022, has focused a variety of industries together with healthcare, finance, authorities, and training. Most just lately it has been seen launching assaults towards massive industrial, technological and telecoms firms.
Via its Dunghill knowledge leak web site on the darkish net, Darkish Angels claims to be “a global workforce of technical specialists conducting analysis within the area of knowledge safety” that’s “not considering politics, and that’s the reason we don’t cooperate with governments and regulation enforcement businesses.”
The reality is, in fact, that Darkish Angels’ method of being profitable is thru extortion – threatening firms that their knowledge can be leaked to the world if a ransom just isn’t paid.
Darkish Angels, having compromised an organization’s safety, resolve whether or not to encrypt a enterprise’s recordsdata after which, most of the time, spend days and even weeks exfiltrating huge quantities of knowledge.
Within the instances of bigger companies which were infiltrated by the group, as much as 100 TB of knowledge could also be stolen in accordance with Zscaler’s researchers.
In a high-profile incident reported by Bleeping Pc in September 2023, Darkish Angels hit a multinational conglomerate, forcing it to close down its IT methods, having encrypted the agency’s VMware ESXi digital machines and claimed to have stolen over 27 TB of company knowledge.
Darkish Angels reportedly demanded a US $51 million ransom from Johnson Controls in trade for a decryption software and to delete the recordsdata it had stolen. The corporate later reported in an SEC submitting that the expense of investigating and remediating the assault, in addition to losses attributable to enterprise disruption, had value it over US $27 million.
Confronted with the headline of an organization paying a record-breaking US $75 million ransom cost, many companies might be questioning how they’d reply when offered with a requirement from cybercriminals.
Admittedly, it is in all probability a terrific deal simpler for a enterprise to resolve whether or not it ought to cough up tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to a ransomware gang than ten thousand {dollars} – however the questions you might want to ask your self stay the identical.
Everyone knows that the extra companies conform to pay a ransom, the extra possible it’s that cybercriminals will launch related assaults towards others sooner or later – in addition to, maybe, your organization once more.
On the identical time, your organization might really feel it has no selection however to make the laborious resolution to pay. In any case, the choice might put your entire enterprise in danger – and put the livelihoods of your workers, companions, and maybe even shoppers in danger.
No matter your resolution, I might say that it’s important to tell regulation enforcement businesses of the incident and work with them to assist them examine who could be behind the assaults.
Most significantly, do not forget that paying a ransom doesn’t be sure that the safety drawback that allowed the attackers into your community within the first place not exists. When you don’t discover out what went unsuitable – and why – and repair it, then you might simply fall sufferer to additional ransomware assaults sooner or later.
Editor’s Notice: The opinions expressed on this and different visitor creator articles are solely these of the contributor and don’t essentially replicate these of Tripwire.
