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Latest coverage for Extortion

Stay updated on cyber extortion trends: threats, prevention tips, and incident responses. Protect your data with the latest info on digital ransom tactics.

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Extortion is coercion through threats: an attacker demands money or another concession while threatening harm if the victim refuses. In cybersecurity, this commonly involves encrypting systems and demanding payment for recovery, stealing data and threatening to publish it (often called double extortion), or threatening service disruption. The threatened harm may be real, exaggerated, or based on data the attacker did not actually obtain; payment does not guarantee data deletion, secrecy, or restoration.

Security teams should treat an extortion demand as a potential incident: preserve evidence, isolate affected systems, determine whether data was accessed, and involve legal and privacy specialists where notification or regulatory duties may apply. Offline, tested backups can reduce leverage from encryption, but they do not address stolen information. Reviewing exposed remote services, credentials, and unpatched internet-facing systems can help contain the access path, while threat intelligence may help assess the attacker’s claims and identify related activity.

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Vendor confirms repo data exposure after Lapsus$ claims source code, secrets dump Software security testing outfit Checkmarx has become the latest organization caught up in an ongoing attack on security-tool providers. The biz said data posted online appears to have come from one of its GitHub repositories after the Lapsus$ extortion crew claimed to have dumped the company’s source code, secrets, and other sensitive data.…

The Register 28 Apr 2026, 11:33 a.m. Exposure Extortion Github Lapsus LAPSUS$ Source Code Supply Chain Vendor

Security giant says attackers grabbed 'limited set' of data. Crooks claim 10 million records A home security biz getting digitally burgled is not a great look - but that's exactly where ADT finds itself. The company has confirmed a cyber intrusion following an extortion attempt by the ShinyHunters crew, which claims to have made off with more than 10 million records.…

The Register 27 Apr 2026, 11:34 p.m. Extortion

Crims 'creating a snowball effect' across open source projects RSAC 2026 Thousands of organizations' cloud environments have been infected with secret-stealing malware as a result of the Trivy supply-chain attack last week, and now the crims that compromised the open source scanners are working with notorious extortion crews like Lapsus$.…

The Register 25 Mar 2026, 9:31 a.m. Cloud Compromise Extortion Infection Lapsus LAPSUS$ Malware Open Source Supply Chain Theft

Washington content to be represented by actual empty chairs RSAC 2026 Back in the day (circa 2023) when cybercrime group Scattered Spider and its help-desk voice-phishing calls were a relatively new threat, the feds considered pulling the government's top cyber-threat hunters and their private-sector counterparts into one room to share information, in real time, about this loosely knit extortion ring that was terrorizing enterprises.…

The Register 24 Mar 2026, 10:56 a.m. China Cybercrime Extortion Government Phishing RSA Scattered Spider

Credential and cryptocurrency theft, live surveillance, ransomware - an attacker's Swiss Army knife A new remote access trojan (RAT) being sold on cybercrime networks enables double extortion attacks on Windows machines by bundling ransomware and data theft, along with credential and cryptocurrency stealers, live surveillance, and a whole host of other illicit capabilities, all controllable from a centralized dashboard.…

The Register 28 Feb 2026, 11:59 a.m. Credentials Cryptocurrency Cybercrime Extortion Microsoft Ransomware Remote Access Trojan Theft Trojan

New ransomware of choice, same critical targets North Korea’s Lazarus Group appears to have added another tool to its kit. It has begun using Medusa ransomware in extortion attacks targeting at least one US healthcare organization and an unnamed victim in the Middle East, according to Symantec and Carbon Black threat hunters.…

The Register 25 Feb 2026, 7:25 a.m. Antivirus Critical Infrastructure Extortion Healthcare Lazarus Middle East North Korea Ransomware Symantec Victims

Extortion group Lovely claims to have stolen 40 million pieces of info from publisher Conde Nast A criminal group is beating Conde Nast over the head for not responding sooner to its extortion attempt by posting stolen subscribers' email and home addresses and warning the publisher of Wired, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Teen Vogue that it has 40 million more entries.…

The Register 30 Dec 2025, 8:23 a.m. Email Extortion Privacy Theft Warning

Checkout.com will instead donate the amount to fund cybercrime research Ransomware is a huge business, because affected orgs keep forking over money to get their data back. However, instead of paying a ransom demand after getting hit by extortionists last week, payment services provider Checkout.com donated the demanded amount to fund cybercrime research.…

The Register 14 Nov 2025, 9:02 a.m. Cybercrime Extortion Ransom Ransomware Research