X-Industry

No one needs reminding that ransomware has reached incredible proportions; one widely reported statistic from Purplesec suggests that $20 billion was paid out in 2020. That's almost double its $11.5 billion estimate from 2019, with a commensurately huge increase in the number of attacks, while BitDefender suggested a 715% increase in the first half of the year.

The "crews" have multiplied, adopted tactics that are reminiscent of nation-state attacks, and developed partnerships and relationships

Last week, US and Bulgarian law enforcement seized the underground site used by the NetWalker ransomware cybercriminal group that was used to post stolen data from victims.  Additionally, a Canadian national is a person of interest who allegedly extorted more than $27 million through the spreading of NetWalker and was indicted in Florida, US.

NetWalker is a ransomware-as-a-service (Raas) crimeware product in which affiliates rent access to the continuously updated malware code in exchange for a

Remember the Dark Side comics?  Well, the DarkSide criminal hacking group is no laughing matter.  The DarkSide Ransomware gang claims they are creating a distributed storage system in Iran to store and leak data stolen from victims.  DarkSide is operated as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) where developers control programming the ransomware software and payment site, and affiliates are recruited to hack businesses and encrypt their devices.

DarkSide is the latest ransomware criminal gang to anno

It should come as no reprise that ransomware groups that steal a company's data and then get paid a fee to delete it don't always follow through on their promise.

The number of cases where this has happened has increased, according to a report[1] published by Coveware this week and according to several incidents shared by security researchers with ZDNet researchers over the past few months. These incidents take place only for a certain category of ransomware attacks — namely those carried out by

Activity Summary - Week Ending 11 September 2020:

• Red Sky Alliance observed 97 unique email accounts compromised with Keyloggers
• Analysts identified 69,770 connections from new unique IP addresses
• The BeagleBoyz are robbing Banks
• Analysts identified 4,775 new IP addresses participating in various Botnets
• Box Pages Utilized in Phishing Attacks
• Netwalker Ransomware in Argentina
• Oil Prices in a new “Supercycle”
• Iranian tankers possibly heading to Venezuela in defiance of US sanctions
• Germany – Nor