How many ransomware threat groups have become household names over the last decade? The answer, surprisingly, is none. Ransomware groups typically spring from nowhere, achieve a degree of notoriety, then disappear just as suddenly, never to be heard of again. None has stuck around long enough to achieve much name recognition. At best, it’s been […]

What’s worse than being hit by a ransomware attack out of the blue? In early December, a Canadian organization discovered the answer in the worst possible way: get ransomed by a second, entirely different attack, on the same day. Being attacked simultaneously by two different ransomware groups is supposed to be rare—or perhaps it’s just […]

For the longest time ransomware attackers stuck to extorting ransoms by encrypting the files of victims in return for an “unlock” key. As backup and disaster recovery made that less effective, around 2019 criminals turned to ‘double’ extortion—the tactic of threatening to publicly release data stolen during attacks. Now it seems ransomware gangs have rapidly […]

The German city of Munich recently hosted two security conferences which, for different reasons, could turn into globally significant reference points for years to come. The first, the annual high-level Munich Security Conference at which senior politicians discussed the crisis in Ukraine, made headlines across the world under the stirring beacon “unlearning helplessness.” Ironically, unlearning […]

Where do the billions of dollars extorted by ransomware criminals end up? Obviously, that cryptocurrency ends up in someone’s bank account before reappearing in the tills of luxury watch shops, sports car dealerships, and five-star resorts around the globe, as criminals spend the proceeds. To make that jump from the virtual to the physical, the […]