Alexander Martin reports: Insurance companies must stop issuing policies that incentivize making extortion payments in ransomware attacks, a senior White House official said on Friday. The call for the practice to end, which was made without any indication the White House was formally proposing to ban the practice, follows the fourth annual International Counter Ransomware…
Category: Malware
Cyberattack hits Wayne County government; services affected as hacker demands ransom
Ross Jones reports: Wayne County government fell victim to a cyberattack Wednesday, according to sources, bringing some services to a standstill. It was not clear Wednesday who was behind the hack, but a source says the hacker made a financial demand of the county through ransomware. “The county information technology team is aware of a…
NZ: New Zealand hearing clinic Bloom warns of massive data theft in ransomware attack
Phil Pennington of RNZ reports: Thousands of customers of a hearing clinic chain in New Zealand have been warned about a ransomware attack that has stolen masses of sensitive data. Bloom Hearing Specialists said some or all of the stolen data had been, or soon will be, published on the dark web. In an online…
Did LockBit really delete your data if you paid them? Nope, and even the affiliates didn’t know that?!
No matter how many times law enforcement tried to caution people not to believe promises by criminals that they would delete stolen data if only you paid them, some victims still paid or will pay. Today, the NCA drove their point home more forcefully: As you know, we were able to fully compromise LockBit’s platform…
LockBit affiliate ‘Beverley’ is Evil Corp’s Aleksandr Ryzhenkov
As posted by Operation Cronos today: Aleksandr Ryzhenkov DOB 26/05/1993 has been unmasked by the NCA as the specific member of Evil Corp who is a LockBit affiliate. Ryzhenkov used the affiliate name Beverley, made over 60 LockBit ransomware builds and sought to extort at least $100 million from victims in ransom demands. Ryzhenkov additionally…
Russian National Indicted for Series of Ransomware Attacks
Indictment Unsealed Charging Aleksandr Ryzhenkov with Attacks Against Multiple Victims in the United States The Justice Department today unsealed an indictment charging Russian national Aleksandr Viktorovich Ryzhenkov (Александр Викторович Рыженков) with using the BitPaymer ransomware variant to attack numerous victims in Texas and throughout the United States and hold their sensitive data for ransom. According to the indictment,…