David Bisson reports:
Several digital gangs have gone back on their pledge to honor the ransomware payments made by victims.
In its Quarterly Ransomware Report for Q3 2020, Coveware notes that nearly half of the ransomware attacks it had tracked during that quarter had included the threat to leak unencrypted data. Yet, multiple gangs did not always delete victims’ stolen data even if they received ransomware payments for that express purpose.
Read more on Security Intelligence to read about the groups and examples he provides of them breaking the word. It is these kinds of examples as well as statements from U.S. Treasury about making payments to groups that support terrorism that are used to urge victims not to pay ransom demands.
Will more victims refuse to pay ransom in 2021? My guess is that they will. As more and more companies have their data dumped on leak sites, more companies will decide that although it’s going to cost them to clean up their reputations and mess, it is not the end of the world for most victim companies, so why pay? And without that extortion payment, it’s back to: do you have a usable backup in case your files are encrypted or otherwise unusable?