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 cost 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 cost nearly doubles the earlier file – $40 million paid by insurance giant CNA Financial in 2021 after being locked out of its network 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 not too long ago it has been seen launching assaults in opposition to massive industrial, technological and telecoms corporations.
By its Dunghill information leak website on the darkish net, Darkish Angels claims to be “a global group 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 earning money is thru extortion – threatening corporations that their information might be leaked to the world if a ransom will not be paid.
Darkish Angels, having compromised an organization’s safety, resolve whether or not to encrypt a enterprise’s recordsdata after which, as a rule, spend days and even weeks exfiltrating huge quantities of knowledge.
Within the instances of bigger companies which have been infiltrated by the group, as much as 100 TB of knowledge could also be stolen according to Zscaler’s researchers.
In a high-profile incident reported by Bleeping Computer 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 trade for a decryption instrument 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 cost it over US $27 million.
Confronted with the headline of an organization paying a record-breaking US $75 million ransom cost, many companies could be questioning how they’d reply when introduced 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 you might want to ask your self stay the identical.
Everyone knows that the extra companies conform to pay a ransom, the extra seemingly it’s that cybercriminals will launch related assaults in opposition to others sooner or later – in addition to, maybe, your organization once more.
On the similar time, your organization might really feel it has no alternative however to make the arduous resolution to pay. In any case, the choice might put the whole enterprise in danger – and put the livelihoods of your employees, companions, and even perhaps 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 certain that the safety drawback that allowed the attackers into your community within the first place now not exists. In case you don’t discover out what went fallacious – and why – and repair it, then you possibly can simply fall sufferer to additional ransomware assaults sooner or later.
Editor’s Be aware: The opinions expressed on this and different visitor creator articles are solely these of the contributor and don’t essentially replicate these of Tripwire.
