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.
A joint operation between the Thai and Singapore police has resulted in the arrest of a man allegedly responsible for over 90 data extortion attacks worldwide
Man Accused of Hacking 90 Organizations Globally Under a Variety of AliasesA suspected hacker tied to more than 90 global data breaches has been arrested in Thailand. The Royal Thai Police and the Singapore Police Force said the 39-year-old suspect used a variety of aliases, including Altdos, Desorden, Ghostr and 0mid16B, and attempted to pressure victims into paying a ransom.
The threat group has a variety of tactics in its toolbox, including double extortion and ransomware-as-a-service.
If there's something nasty on your employment record, extortion scum could come calling DISA Global Solutions, a company that provides drug and alcohol testing, background checks, and other employee screening services, this week notified over 3.3 million people that their sensitive information may have been stolen by miscreants.…