Stay updated on cyber extortion trends: threats, prevention tips, and incident responses. Protect your data with the latest info on digital ransom tactics.
Search across headline titles and summaries.
Background for this topic.
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.
Two teenagers from the UK charged with helping the Lapsus$ extortion gang have been released on bail after appearing in the Highbury Corner Magistrates Court court on Friday morning. [...]
IT and software consultancy firm Globant has confirmed that they were breached by the Lapsus$ data extortion group, where data consisting of administrator credentials and source code was leaked by the threat actors. [...]
Okta has admitted that it made a mistake delaying the disclosure hack from the Lapsus$ data extortion group that took place in January. Additionally, the company has provided a detailed timeline of the incident and its investigation activities. [...]