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 Hôpital de Cannes - Simone Veil (CHC-SV) in France announced it received a ransom demand from the Lockbit 3.0 ransomware gang, saying they refuse to pay the ransom. [...]
While most healthcare sector organizations hit with ransomware attacks never imagine giving in to extortion demands, the pressures they face in dealing with the crisis often push about half of them to pay, said attorney Lynn Sessions of BakerHostetler, speaking about the firm's healthcare clients.