In the wake of an accusatory post on Ramp Forum that claimed that AlphV admins allegedly stole a $22 million payment to an affiliate by Change Healthcare and then suspended the affiliate’s account, AlphV hastened what appears to be an exit scam on their part. Yesterday, a copy of the seizure notice posted on their leak site in December by law enforcement appeared on their newer leak site. Fabian Wosar was the first to point people to the source code differences between the two seizure notices and contacted law enforcement in the UK, who denied any knowledge of or participation in any new seizure.
In addition to the fake seizure notice, AlphV changed their tox account status to “GG” (good game), again suggesting an exit scam.
The fake notice and “GG” appeared consistent with what DataBreaches had been told by a source who had been involved with AlphV. That source told this site that a re-branding had already been in the works, and this just may have sped things up. That source also reiterated that Change Healthcare had paid Alphv as the affiliate had claimed, although Change Healthcare / Optum declined to respond to direct questions as to whether they paid ransom. There is still no proof or hard confirmation of payment by Change Healthcare.
Regardless of whether they paid the ransom, the affiliate in question (who calls themself “notchy” on Ramp) claims that they still have the 4 TB of data exfiltrated from Change Healthcare.
Yesterday, another post appeared on Ramp. What it actually means is unclear, as DataBreaches asked a few people what they think the post is saying and has gotten different answers each time. The only common denominator in interpretations is that AlphV is trying to blame the FBI. Here’s the post for those who would like to try their hand at interpreting it:
“There’s no sense in making excuses. Yes, we knew about the problem, and we were trying to solve it. We told the affiliate to wait. We could send you our private chat logs where we are shocked by everything that’s happening and are trying to solve the issue with the transactions by using a higher fee, but there’s no sense in doing that because we decided to fully close the project. We can officially state that we got screwed by the feds.
The source code will be sold, the deal is already being negotiated.
Thanks for being with us.
You can delete this account, I will not be logging in here anymore, and we don’t have accounts on other forums, those are all fakes.”
The source code is reportedly for sale for $5 million.
Last night, DataBreaches received an email from a second source associated with Alphv. That correspondent pointed to this site’s previous post and claimed this was all provocation by the FBI and I should ask Change Healthcare whether they paid any ransom. But this site had already done that, to no avail.
In a subsequent chat last night with the first source who had previously indicated he had been locked out of some things, DataBreaches asked whether he knew of any other affiliates who had been burned by AlphV. The source said he was unable to check, but claimed that he had heard from some others. “But their issues got resolved in the last day or so,” he claimed.
At this point, it seems highly likely that a re-branding is coming soon.