Ransomware encrypts or steals data to disrupt operations and extort victims, making backups, access controls, and incident response essential.
Search across headline titles and summaries.
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.
The Kraken ransomware, which targets Windows, Linux/VMware ESXi systems, is testing machines to check how fast it can encrypt data without overloading them. [...]
US government agencies are warning that the Akira ransomware operation has been spotted encrypting Nutanix AHV virtual machines in attacks. [...]
Synnovis, a leading UK pathology services provider, is notifying healthcare providers that a data breach occurred following a ransomware attack in June 2024, which resulted in the theft of some patients' data. [...]
A sudden CPU spike turned out to be the first clue of an in-progress RansomHub ransomware attack. Varonis breaks down how their team traced the attack from fake browser updates to domain-admin takeover, ultimately stopping the attack before files were encrypted. [...]
A Russian national will plead guilty to acting as an initial access broker (IAB) for Yanluowang ransomware attacks that targeted at least eight U.S. companies between July 2021 and November 2022. [...]
A Russian national will plead guilty to acting as an initial access broker (IAB) for Yanluowang ransomware attacks that targeted at least eight U.S. companies between July 2021 and November 2022. [...]