DailyPost 2868
$75 MILLION RANSOM!
The world has a fancy for records and awards and that sticks onto you for the rest of your life and mostly even beyond. To top in some area, field or expertise is not easy, so as to get it accepted as being worthy of it. When hacking has become the new normal, and ransomware the flavour of the hacking world, how can they remain far away from the world of records. Ransoms have been known to humans for quite some time, but nothing of this nature has ever been practised. Ransomware gangs have unleashed a different world.
Ransom has broken the glass ceiling. Money generated from it now knows no bounds in the digital world. The added fun is that there is barely any chance to get caught, so you can keep running your ransomware empire, anyone else in any trade would not have ever thought of in this direction. No tech ever provided this nature of freedom to any criminal / gang ever. The world became his theatre to be ransomed. These are weird times we live in. The story is that Dark Angels ransomware received a record breaking $75 million ransom. The company remains unknown, there is no confirmation from them, but the research indicates the same.
As per the Zscaler ThreatLabz a Fortune 50 company paid a record breaking $75 million payment to Dark Angels ransomware gang. In early 2024 ThreatLabz uncovered a ransom payment of this amount. This is higher than any publicly known ransom amount. This could just turn out to be an inspiration to other attackers to replicate such success by adopting their key tactics. This was not the only research resource divulging this piece of information. This “record-breaking payment was further confirmed by crypto intelligence company, Chainalysis.
Before this record breaking deal, the largest known ransom payment was $40 million, paid by insurance giant CNA to Evil Corp after suffering their attack. The attack which led to this ransom payment took place in Jan 2024, the company was in Fortune 50. Another company, a part of Fortune 500, suffered a cyber attack in Feb.2024. Cencora is ranked 10th on the list. Dark Angels launched its operations in May 2022 and started chasing companies worldwide. Like many others in this trade, Dark Angels operators breach corporate networks and move laterally and eventually gain administrative access. While the whole process is meticulously executed, they invariably steal data from compromised servers. In this attack, Dark Angels claimed to have stolen 27 TB of corporate data and demanded $51 million ransom payment.
RANSOMWARE GANGS ARE THE MOST MERCENARY TECH CRIMINALS EVER.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.