The staggering sum of US $75 million has reportedly been paid to a ransomware gang in what’s believed to be the most important recognized ransom fee made by a cyber assault sufferer since data 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 fee nearly doubles the earlier report – $40 million paid by insurance coverage big 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 schooling. Most just lately it has been seen launching assaults towards giant industrial, technological and telecoms corporations.
Via its Dunghill information leak website on the darkish internet, Darkish Angels claims to be “a world staff of technical specialists conducting analysis within the discipline of data safety” that’s “not concerned about politics, and that’s the reason we don’t cooperate with governments and legislation enforcement businesses.”
The reality is, after all, that Darkish Angels’ approach of being profitable is thru extortion – threatening corporations that their information might be leaked to the world if a ransom is just not paid.
Darkish Angels, having compromised an organization’s safety, resolve whether or not to encrypt a enterprise’s information after which, as a rule, spend days and even weeks exfiltrating huge quantities of information.
Within the instances of bigger companies which were infiltrated by the group, as much as 100 TB of information could also be stolen in line 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 information.
Darkish Angels reportedly demanded a US $51 million ransom from Johnson Controls in alternate for a decryption instrument and to delete the information it had stolen. The corporate later reported in an SEC submitting that the expense of investigating and remediating the assault, in addition to losses brought on by enterprise disruption, had price it over US $27 million.
Confronted with the headline of an organization paying a record-breaking US $75 million ransom fee, many companies might be questioning how they’d reply when offered with a requirement from cybercriminals.
Admittedly, it is most likely an amazing deal simpler for a enterprise to resolve whether or not it ought to cough up tens of tens of millions of {dollars} to a ransomware gang than ten thousand {dollars} – however the questions it’s good to ask your self stay the identical.
Everyone knows that the extra companies comply with pay a ransom, the extra doubtless it’s that cybercriminals will launch comparable assaults towards others sooner or later – in addition to, maybe, your organization once more.
On the similar time, your organization might really feel it has no selection however to make the exhausting determination to pay. In any case, the choice might put all the enterprise in danger – and put the livelihoods of your workers, companions, and even perhaps purchasers in danger.
No matter your determination, I’d say that it’s important to tell legislation enforcement businesses of the incident and work with them to assist them examine who could be behind the assaults.
Most significantly, keep in mind that paying a ransom doesn’t make sure that the safety drawback that allowed the attackers into your community within the first place not exists. If you happen to don’t discover out what went improper – and why – and repair it, then you would simply fall sufferer to additional ransomware assaults sooner or later.
Editor’s Word: The opinions expressed on this and different visitor creator articles are solely these of the contributor and don’t essentially mirror these of Tripwire.
