Ransomware Demands are Doubling Every Six Months, Study Finds
Just two years ago, ransomware was seen as a nuisance: For just a few thousand dollars—and sometimes even less—victims could obtain decryption keys to unlock their data. Since then, the average payment demanded by ransomware operators has skyrocketed, reaching an astounding $178,254 in the second quarter of 2020, nearly quadruple the amount demanded in the same period one year earlier…
Hacker Directly Targets Patients Following a Data Breach at a Finnish Mental Health Provider
A data breach involving a mental health provider in Finland has devolved into a horrifying extortion scheme that includes the abuse of hypersensitive medical data. “It’s an indescribable feeling when you know that someone has information of your traumas and is willing to use it against you,” said one patient who received a ransom email over the weekend and asked not to be named given the sensitivity of the information involved. “I feel like I have once again taken a step back in my treatment. It hurts to know that my journey to better health might take even longer now.”
TrickBot Operators Show Signs of Pivoting After Takedown Attempt
U.S. Cyber Command and a team of companies and organizations led by Microsoft delivered a one-two punch in recent weeks against TrickBot, one of the world’s largest botnets. In the last couple days, however, TrickBot spamming campaigns have started up again…
Is It OK to Pay a Ransomware Demand? Depends Who You Ask
The U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a pair of advisories last week that could potentially shake up how organizations respond to ransomware attacks. But departments and agencies have issued a patchwork of guidelines in recent years on how to approach the issue, which might lead to some head-scratching…
‘Be Careful Who You Bite’: An Interview With the Businessman at the Center of One of Russia’s Biggest Treason Scandals
In 2013, Pavel Vrublevsky’s life turned upside down. After ten years of running a successful payments firm called ChronoPay, the Russian internet entrepreneur was convicted of orchestrating a distributed denial-of-service attack against a competing payments system used by Russian airline Aeroflot. Vrublevsky talked extensively with Recorded Future expert threat intelligence analyst Dmitry Smilyanets about this event and others in a recent interview…
Russian Hacker Nikulin Sentenced to Over 7 Years in Prison for Tech Industry Breaches
A Russian national was sentenced Tuesday afternoon for breaching several technology firms, capping a drawn-out legal battle that has involved competing extradition attempts, luxury sports cars, and delays due to the coronavirus outbreak…
Wire Transfer Scams Are Getting More Costly
Law enforcement officials have warned companies for years about the huge losses associated with business email compromise attacks, in which
DDoS Attacks Decline, but Big Incidents Still Resonate
Are the days of DDoS attacks over? Reports last week that the New Zealand Stock Exchange suffered a multi-day disruption
An Interview With RedBear: A Hacker Training the Next Generation of Cybercriminals
Editor’s Note: In the interest of exploring the untold stories of cybersecurity, The Record is publishing a recent interview between
Chart of the Week: Ransomware Attacks on Schools
As students across the country return to class — whether in-person or remote — cybersecurity practitioners are bracing for the