Ransomware payments reached an estimated $1.1 billion in 2023, per a report from crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis. It’s no wonder that ransomware is a growing threat — and from the victims’ perspective, the temptation to pay is certainly understandable. But...

Data exfiltration refers to any malicious attack that steals data from the victim. It’s also known as “data theft,” though the term “data exfiltration” is more specific to the data on networks or larger-scale IT systems (as opposed to the...

The FBI’s 2023 Internet Crime Report (PDF) shows the dramatic growth of the ransomware industry — and details some of the techniques that bad actors use to compromise critical IT systems. It’s important to note that these statistics are not...

According to a report from Reuters, the Blackcat ransomware gang is behind a massive ransomware attack that has impacted prescription deliveries throughout the United States. Last week, bad actors reportedly gained access to systems owned by Change Healthcare, a prescription...

A group of researchers has released a free recovery tool for data encrypted by Rhysida ransomware.  The Rhysida ransomware variant appeared towards the beginning of 2023 and spread quickly, primarily targeting education, healthcare, manufacturing, government, and information technology (IT) sectors....

White Phoenix is an open-source ransomware decryption tool, intended for use with larger files encrypted by the Play ransomware group and other ransomware variants that use intermittent encryption. The tool is available on GitHub here, and it’s both free...

In a report from software company Veeam, 75% of businesses said that they’d dealt with ransomware or malware attacks in 2023. The attacks were cited as the most common cause of technology outages, and many organizations were subjected to multiple...

Satoshi Nakamoto — the pseudonym used by the founder of Bitcoin — is a little bit richer this week.  On Friday, January 5, Nakamoto’s first cryptocurrency wallet received a deposit of 26.9 bitcoin (BTC). The transaction was valued at about...

A team from Security Research Labs (SRL) has released a set of free decryption utilities for victims of specific Black Basta ransomware attacks.  Of course, the tools are not perfect: Data recovery depends on the size of the file and...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced a disruption campaign against ALPHV, a ransomware group responsible for hundreds of attacks on businesses and critical U.S. infrastructure. ALPHV, also known as Blackcat or Noberus, is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) gang. RaaS groups...