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.
The notorious cybercrime group known as FIN7 has been observed deploying Cl0p (aka Clop) ransomware, marking the threat actor's first ransomware campaign since late 2021
A Russian national has been charged and indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) for launching ransomware attacks against "thousands of victims" in the country and across the world
Ransomware affiliates associated with the Qilin ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) scheme earn anywhere between 80% to 85% of the ransom payments, according to new findings from Group-IB
A new ransomware group known as RA Group has become the latest threat actor to leverage the leaked Babuk ransomware source code to spawn its own locker variant
A new ransomware-as-service (RaaS) operation called MichaelKors has become the latest file-encrypting malware to target Linux and VMware ESXi systems as of April 2023
Poorly managed Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) servers are the target of a new campaign that's designed to propagate a category of malware called CLR SqlShell that ultimately facilitates the deployment of cryptocurrency miners and ransomware