New Ransomware Gangs Haron & BlackMatter Are After Fat Cats

So much for darkened servers at the headquarters of DarkSide or REvil ransomware groups. Turns out, we’ve got either their rebranded versions or two new ransomware gangs to contend with. The first new group to appear this month was Haron, and the second is named BlackMatter. As Ars Technica‘s Dan...

The Threat That Never Went Away Is Back (with a Vengeance)

What is your recollection of May 2017? Emmanuel Macron won the French election. The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus gave its final performance after a 146-year run. The U.S. FCC voted to overturn net neutrality rules. And the National Health Service in the United Kingdom was crippled by...

Long-awaited changes to the nation's cybersecurity infrastructure become reality

There is a lot of buzz in the biz about the ripple effects of President Bidens "Executive Order EO on Improving the Nations Cybersecurity," which comes on the heels of the Colonial Pipeline hack. The pipeline, which delivers about 45% of the fuel used on the Eastern Seaboard, was shut down after ...

Threat Source newsletter (June 17, 2021)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw.Good afternoon, Talos readers. Although the Colonial Pipeline attack is largely behind us now, its potential repercussions are not. This was just the latest in a string of attacks against American critical infrastructure over the past few years, and we... This i...

Takeaways from the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack

If you feel like you’ve read a lot about ransomware in recent months, it’s because these attacks have indeed intensified. In 2020, ransomware attacks surged by 150 percent, with the average payment size increasing by more than 170 percent. Some of the notable victims include United Health Service...

Google Won't Kill the URL After All

Plus: A Colonial Pipeline update, inside details of the FBI's Anom caper, and more of the week's top security news...

JBS Paid $11M to REvil Gang Even After Restoring Operations

JBS Foods paid the equivalent of $11 million in ransom after a cyber-attack that forced the company to shut down some operations in the United States and Australia over the Memorial Day weekend. The company made the payment to cybercriminals to ensure the protection of its data and mitigate any...

DarkSide Pwned Colonial With Old VPN Password

It took only one dusty, no-longer-used password for the DarkSide cybercriminals to breach the network of Colonial Pipeline Co. last month, resulting in a ransomware attack that caused significant disruption and remains under investigation by the U.S. government and cybersecurity experts. Attacker...

U.S. Recovers $2.3 Million Ransom Paid to Colonial Pipeline Hackers

In a major blow, the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday said it has recovered 63.7 bitcoins currently valued at $2.3 million paid by Colonial Pipeline to the DarkSide ransomware extortionists on May 8, pursuant to a seizure warrant that was authorized by the Northern District of California. The...

Justice Dept. Claws Back $2.3M Paid by Colonial Pipeline to Ransomware Gang

The U.S. Department of Justice said today it has recovered $2.3 million worth of Bitcoin that Colonial Pipeline paid to ransomware extortionists last month. The funds had been sent to DarkSide, a ransomware-as-a-service syndicate that disbanded after a May 14 farewell message to affiliates saying...

Hackers Breached Colonial Pipeline Using Compromised VPN Password

The ransomware cartel that masterminded the Colonial Pipeline attack early last month crippled the pipeline operator's network using a compromised virtual private network VPN account password, the latest investigation into the incident has revealed. The development, which was reported by Bloomber...

Podcast: The State of Ransomware

Last month, ransomware group DarkSide targeted operator Colonial Pipeline Co., disrupting fuel supply in the Eastern part of the U.S. The attack on a major U.S. oil pipeline had widespread ripples: it prompted President Joe Biden to declare a state of emergency and caused substantial pain at gas...

Biden’s Cybersecurity EO: The Wrong Issues

It’s no secret that foreign adversaries are making a concerted effort to target U.S. government agencies and companies. As technology advances and foreign superpowers gain influence, the game is shifting beneath our feet here in the U.S. Motivated in part by the extent and consequences of the...

Colonial Pipeline attack spurs new rules for critical infrastructure

Following a devastating cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline, the Transportation Security Administration—which sits within the government’s Department of Homeland Security—will issue its first-ever cybersecurity directive for pipeline companies in the United States, according to exclusive reporti...

A week in security (May 10 – 16)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we watched and reported on the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack as developments of its story unfolded. This attack triggered the White House to refine a planned Executive Order on cybersecurity. We also profiled DarkSide, the ransomware responsible for the...

DarkSide ransomware call it quits after Bitcoin, servers are seized

By Habiba Rashid DarkSide Ransomware gang was behind the recent Colonial Pipeline cyberattack. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: DarkSide ransomware call it quits after Bitcoin, servers are seized...

DarkSide Suffers ‘Oh, Crap!’ Server Shutdowns

DarkSide, the ransomware-as-a-server RaaS gang that crippled Colonial Pipeline Co. a week ago, extorted around $5 million, and sent the fuel company a decryption tool that reportedly could barely limp through the process of unlocking files, has now been paralyzed itself. In the wee hours of Frida...

DarkSide Ransomware Gang Quits After Servers, Bitcoin Stash Seized

The DarkSide ransomware affiliate program responsible for the six-day outage at Colonial Pipeline this week that led to fuel shortages and price spikes across the country is running for the hills. The crime gang announced it was closing up shop after its servers were seized and someone drained th...

Ransomware’s New Swindle: Triple Extortion

Ransomware attacks are exploding at a staggering rate, and so are the ransoms being demanded. Now experts are warning against a new threat — triple extortion — which means that attackers are expanding out to demand payments from customers, partners and other third parties related to the initial...

Ransomware Is Getting Ugly

Modern ransomware has two dimensions: pay to get your data back, and pay not to have your data dumped on the Internet. The DC police are the victims of this ransomware, and the criminals have just posted personnel records -- "including the results of psychological assessments and polygraph tests;...