Ransomware encrypts or steals data to disrupt operations and extort victims, making backups, access controls, and incident response essential.
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Background for this topic.
Ransomware is malware used to deny access to systems or data, usually by encrypting files and demanding payment for decryption. Many operations also steal sensitive information and threaten to publish it, so an attack can create both an availability crisis and a privacy or disclosure risk. Initial access may involve phishing, stolen credentials, exposed remote services, or exploitation of unpatched vulnerabilities; attackers may then move through the network before deploying the payload.
Defenses should combine vulnerability management, phishing-resistant authentication where practical, endpoint and network monitoring, and backups that are isolated from routine administrator access and regularly tested for recovery. Organizations should also limit privileges and segment critical systems to reduce the blast radius. An incident requires rapid containment, preservation of forensic evidence, restoration from known-good backups, and assessment of notification, legal, and regulatory obligations. Threat intelligence can help identify relevant criminal infrastructure or tactics, but it does not replace sound access control, patching, detection, and recovery practices.
Weekly headline count for the current query.
The critical remote code execution flaw (CVE-2026-1731) in the remote monitoring and management tool can be exploited to spread ransomware and compromise supply chains.
Researchers say exploitation of CVE-2025-10035 requires a private key, and it's unclear how Storm-1175 threat actors pulled this off.
Attackers are wielding the sophisticated modular malware while exploiting CVE-2025-29824, a previously zero-day flaw in Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) that allows attackers to gain system-level privileges on compromised systems.
CISA this week added CVE-2025-24472 to its catalog of known exploited vulnerabilities, citing ransomware activity targeting the authentication bypass flaw.
CVE-2020-1472 is a privilege escalation flaw that allows an attacker to take over an organization's domain controllers.
Hundreds of initial access brokers and cybercrime gangs are jumping on the max-critical CVE-2024-1709 authentication bypass, threatening orgs and downstream customers.
Meanwhile, CISA joins the call to patch CVE-2023-4966 immediately amid reports of mass-exploit activity; at least 5,000 orgs remain exposed.