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Latest coverage for Ransomware

Ransomware encrypts or steals data to disrupt operations and extort victims, making backups, access controls, and incident response essential.

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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.

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Krebs on Security 4 years, 5 months ago

Wazawaka Goes Waka Waka

In January, KrebsOnSecurity examined clues left behind by "Wazawaka," the hacker handle chosen by a major ransomware criminal in the Russian-speaking cybercrime scene. Wazawaka has since "lost his mind" according to his erstwhile colleagues, creating a Twitter account to drop exploit code for a widely-used virtual private networking (VPN) appliance, and publishing bizarre selfie videos taunting security researchers and journalists. In last month's story, we explored clues that led from Wazawaka's multitude of monikers, email addresses, and passwords to a 30-something father in Abakan, Russia named Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev. This post concerns itself with the other half of Wazawaka's identities not mentioned in the first story, such as how Wazawaka also ran the Babuk ransomware affiliate program, and later became "Orange," the founder of the ransomware-focused Dark Web forum known as "RAMP."