Emsisoft

April 5, 2021

Ransom Gangs Emailing Victim Customers for Leverage

This post was originally published on this siteSome of the top ransomware gangs are deploying a new pressure tactic to push more victim organizations into paying an extortion demand: Emailing the victim’s customers and partners directly, warning that their data will be leaked to the dark web unless they can convince the victim firm to pay up. This letter is from the Clop ransomware gang, putting pressure on a recent victim named on Clop’s dark web shaming site. “Good day! If you received this letter, you are a customer, buyer, partner or employee of [victim],” the missive reads. “The company […]
April 29, 2021

Task Force Seeks to Disrupt Ransomware Payments

This post was originally published on this siteSome of the world’s top tech firms are backing a new industry task force focused on disrupting cybercriminal ransomware gangs by limiting their ability to get paid, and targeting the individuals and finances of the organized thieves behind these crimes. In a 50-page report delivered to the Biden administration this week, top executives from Amazon, Cisco, FireEye, McAfee, Microsoft and dozens of other firms joined the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Europol and the U.K. National Crime Agency in calling for an international coalition to combat ransomware criminals, and for a global network […]
July 19, 2021

Don’t Wanna Pay Ransom Gangs? Test Your Backups.

This post was originally published on this siteBrowse the comments on virtually any story about a ransomware attack and you will almost surely encounter the view that the victim organization could have avoided paying their extortionists if only they’d had proper data backups. But the ugly truth is there are many non-obvious reasons why victims end up paying even when they have done nearly everything right from a data backup perspective. This story isn’t about what organizations do in response to cybercriminals holding their data for hostage, which has become something of a best practice among most of the top […]
July 29, 2021

The Life Cycle of a Breached Database

This post was originally published on this siteEvery time there is another data breach, we are asked to change our password at the breached entity. But the reality is that in most cases by the time the victim organization discloses an incident publicly the information has already been harvested many times over by profit-seeking cybercriminals. Here’s a closer look at what typically transpires in the weeks or months before an organization notifies its users about a breached database. Our continued reliance on passwords for authentication has contributed to one toxic data spill or hack after another. One might even say […]