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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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.
The City of London Police has arrested seven teenagers between the ages of 16 and 21 for their alleged connections to the prolific LAPSUS$ extortion gang that's linked to a recent burst of attacks targeting NVIDIA, Samsung, Ubisoft, LG, Microsoft, and Okta
New data pulled from incident response cases by Unit 42 shows cyber-extortion attacks jumped by 85%.
As Lapsus$ data extortion gang announced that several of its members are taking a vacation, the City of London Police say they have arrested seven individuals connected to the gang. [...]
Authentication services provider Okta on Wednesday named Sitel as the third-party linked to a security incident experienced by the company in late January that allowed the LAPSUS$ extortion gang to remotely take over an internal account belonging to a customer support engineer
Microsoft and identity management platform Okta both disclosed this week breaches involving LAPSUS$, a relatively new cybercrime group that specializes in stealing data from big companies and threatening to publish the information unless a ransom demand is paid. Here's a closer look at LAPSUS$, and some of the low-tech but high-impact methods the group uses to gain access to targeted organizations.
The data-extortion gang got at Microsoft's Azure DevOps server. Meanwhile, fellow Lapsus$ victim and authentication firm Okta said 2.5 percent of customers were affected in its own Lapsus$ attack.
Plus: Microsoft reveals gang pulled off limited source code heist after single account compromised Identity management as-a-service platform Okta says the Lapsus$ extortion gang may in fact have managed to see some of its customers' data, and Microsoft has admitted the crew got its grubby paws on some source code.…
Microsoft confesses gang pulled off limited source code heist after single account compromised Identity management as-a-service platform Okta has admitted that the Lapsus$ extortion gang managed to see some of its customers' data, and Microsoft has admitted the gang got its grubby paws on some source code.…
Microsoft on Tuesday confirmed that the LAPSUS$ extortion-focused hacking crew had gained "limited access" to its systems, as authentication services provider Okta revealed that nearly 2.5% of its customers have been potentially impacted in the wake of the breach
Microsoft has confirmed that one of their employees was compromised by the Lapsus$ hacking group, allowing the threat actors to access and steal portions of their source code. [...]
Okta, a major provider of access management systems, says that 2.5%, or approximately 375 customers, were impacted by a cyberattack claimed by the Lapsus$ data extortion group. [...]
Okta, a major provider of access management systems, has completed its investigation into a breach incident claimed by the Lapsus$ data extortion group. [...]
Cloudflare takes no chances, hits the identity reset button The Lapsus$ extortion crew has turned its attention to identity platform Okta and published screenshots purportedly showing the group gaining access to the company's internals.…
If boasts are true, Windows giant will join Nvidia, Samsung, others as victims The Lapsus$ extortion gang briefly alleged over the weekend it had compromised Microsoft.…
Microsoft says they are investigating claims that the Lapsus$ data extortion hacking group breached their internal Azure DevOps source code repositories and stolen data. [...]