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.
Ransomware threat actors tracked as Velvet Tempest are using the ClickFix technique and legitimate Windows utilities to deploy the DonutLoader malware and the CastleRAT backdoor. [...]
A Russian national pleaded guilty to a wire fraud conspiracy charge related to his role in administering the Phobos ransomware operation, which breached hundreds of victims worldwide. [...]
The University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) says it has resumed normal operations, nine days after a ransomware attack blocked access to electronic medical records and took down many of its IT systems. [...]
A routine RDP brute-force alert led to unusual credential hunting and a geo-distributed VPN-linked infrastructure. Huntress Labs explains how one compromised login unraveled a suspected ransomware-as-a-service ecosystem tied to initial access brokers. [...]
The University of Hawaii confirmed that a ransomware gang stole the data of nearly 1.2 million individuals in August 2025 after breaching its Cancer Center's Epidemiology Division. [...]