The LockBit 2.0 ransomware gang is actively recruiting corporate insiders to help them breach and encrypt networks. In return, the insider is promised million-dollar payouts. Many ransomware gangs operate as a Ransomware-as-a-Service, which consists of a core group of developers, who maintain the ransomware and payment sites, and recruited affiliates who breach victims' networks and encrypt devices. Read more >>>
The No More Ransom project celebrates its fifth anniversary today after helping over six million ransomware victims recover their files and saving them almost €1 billion in ransomware payments. No More Ransom is an online portal launched in July 2016 and a public-private partnership created by law enforcement and industry leaders (Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Netherlands’ police, McAfee, and Kaspersky). Read more >>>
July 21, 2021
Browse the comments on virtually any story about a ransomware attack and you will almost surely encounter the view that the victim organization could have avoided paying their extortionists if only they’d had proper data backups. But the ugly truth is there are many non-obvious reasons why victims end up paying even when they have done nearly everything right from a data backup perspective. Read more >>>
Cloudstar still has no “definitive restoration timeline” for its cloud-hosting systems that were taken out by a ransomware attack on July 16. It also said “it is too early to speculate about what data may have been impacted” or information breached, according to a July 19 post on its website. The company hired third-party forensics experts Tetra Defense to help in recovery efforts and contacted law enforcement. “Negotiations with the threat actor are ongoing,” the company posted. Read more >>>
Ransomware has arrived in the title and escrow industry in a big way. One of the title industry’s main cloud-hosting providers (Cloudstar) has been sidelined by a ransomware attack, the company confirmed in an email to The Title Report. Read more >>>
Google has released Chrome 91.0.4472.164 for Windows, Mac, and Linux to fix seven security vulnerabilities, one of them a high severity zero-day vulnerability exploited in the wild. "Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2021-30563 exists in the wild," the company revealed. The new Chrome release has started rolling out worldwide to the Stable desktop channel and will become available to all users over the following days. Read more >>>