Daily Post 1267
RANSOMWARE’s NEW BLACKMAIL TACTICS
Ransomware attacks across the globe has been taking out the sails of the smooth sailing IT and other enterprises for quite sometime now. The methodologies has been wide and varied starting from social engineering and finally ending up encrypting data and making a neat sum out of it. Even by the chequered genealogy of this trade ransomware gangs posting highly-sensitive documents to pressure victims to pay up can be reaching the nadir of this trade.
The documents being traded includes classified reports on multiple-million-dollar strategies of Fortune 50 companies and other dangerous secrets. Criminals are known to he ingenious and a cyber criminal has to be a few notches ahead. What better use can be the hostage data be put to? Instead of making money out of the conventional ransomware attack, this can turn out to the golden goose. The game changer is realising the value data encrypted and kept hostage is much inferior to the inherent value of data to be manipulated. This hits at the business existence of the company.
Ransomware gangs have recently posted highly sensitive documents. These are the modern gangsters. These documents have been stolen from different companies. It includes classified business information, a confidential diagram from a defense contractor & power plants documents. An extremely nuanced system has been put in place. This is the interplay of releasing data as well as locking it up with encryption. This strategy turns up the heat on victims of ransomware. It is a $170 billion global problem today.
Ransomware hackers hacked Japan-based cybersecurity firm Emsisoft. The key documents of the company were leaked after three recent ransomware attacks. The hacking group is well-known. Visser Precision, was hit by the DoppelPaymer ransom group, which posted Visser’s data relating to Lockheed Martin etc. An international consulting firm was hit by the REvil ransomware group, posted the consultants’ data on the dark web. Industrial power systems manufacturer was hacked by Maze ransomware group. The clock is ticking. The million dollar question is whether to ”pay criminals to release their data – which they often don’t do, anyway – or suffer downtime as they try to bring their computer systems back up and reclaim their data.”
EVALUATING THE VALUE OF DATA AND THEN RLEASE WHERE IS HURTS MOST IS PRECARIOUSLY TREACHEROUS.
Sanjay Sahay