[ALERT] More Than 10% of Ransomware Attacks Now Involve Data Theft / Data Breach

Stu Sjouwerman | Jul 15, 2020

ransomware data theft breachResearch into recent ransomware submissions from TripWire revealed that more than a tenth of crypto-malware infections now involve some element of data theft.

In the second quarter of 2020, ID Ransomware received 100,001 submissions of crypto-malware pertaining to attacks that had targeted organizations and government entities.

Of those attacks, 11,642 involved the theft of victim data by their perpetrators. That’s over 11% of the attacks for that six-month period.

These attacks involved numerous ransomware gangs. In March 2020, for instance, the Nefilim crypto-malware strain began telling its victims that it would publish their stolen data within a week unless they paid their ransom. That was about a month before the security firm learned of Ragnar Locker’s demand of 1580 bitcoin (approximately $11 million) as ransom from Energias de Portuga (EDP), a Portuguese electric utilities company from which the attackers claimed to have stolen 10TB of data. Approximately a month after that, DoppelPaymer published a new entry on its data leaks site for the City of Torrance, CA.

The “City of Torrance, CA” post published on DopplelPaymer’s data leaks site. (Source: Bleeping Computer)

Acknowledging those risks, it’s imperative that organizations work to prevent a ransomware infection in the first place. New-school security awareness training can ensure your users can be able to spot the warning signs and report any suspicious emails. 

TripWire has the full story

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