He Trained Cops to Fight Crypto Crime—and Allegedly Ran a $100M Dark-Web Drug Market

The strange journey of Lin Rui-siang, the 23-year-old accused of running the Incognito black market, extorting his own site’s users—and then refashioning himself as a legit crypto crime expert...

Trinity Ransomware Strikes with the Dual Extortion Strategy

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Black Basta Ransomware Strikes 500+ Entities Across North America, Europe, and Australia

The Black Basta ransomware-as-a-service RaaS operation has targeted more than 500 private industry and critical infrastructure entities in North America, Europe, and Australia since its emergence in April 2022. In a joint advisory published by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency...

Psychotherapy practice hacker gets jail time after extorting patients, publishing personal therapy notes online

On October 30, 2020, I started a article with the words: “Hell is too nice a place for these people.” The subject of this outrage focused on the cybercriminals behind an attack on Finnish psychotherapy practice Vastaamo. Because it was a psychotherapy practice, the records contained extremely...

Verizon’s 2024 DBIR Unpacked: From Ransomware Evolution to Supply Chain Vulnerabilities

As we delve into cybersecuritys complex and evolving landscape, the Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report DBIR offers crucial insights into the mechanisms and motives behind the latest wave of cyberattacks. Qualys is once again proud to contribute to the report, helping to dissect these...

Man Who Mass-Extorted Psychotherapy Patients Gets Six Years

A 26-year-old Finnish man was sentenced to more than six years in prison today after being convicted of hacking into an online psychotherapy clinic, leaking tens of thousands of patient therapy records, and attempting to extort the clinic and patients. On October 21, 2020, the Vastaamo...

Ransomware Double-Dip: Re-Victimization in Cyber Extortion

Between crossovers - Do threat actors play dirty or desperate? In our dataset of over 11,000 victim organizations that have experienced a Cyber Extortion / Ransomware attack, we noticed that some victims re-occur. Consequently, the question arises why we observe a re-victimization and whether or...

Akira Ransomware Gang Extorts $42 Million; Now Targets Linux Servers

Threat actors behind the Akira ransomware group have extorted approximately $42 million in illicit proceeds after breaching the networks of more than 250 victims as of January 1, 2024. "Since March 2023, Akira ransomware has impacted a wide range of businesses and critical infrastructure entities...

Muddled Libra Shifts Focus to SaaS and Cloud for Extortion and Data Theft Attacks

The threat actor known as Muddled Libra has been observed actively targeting software-as-a-service SaaS applications and cloud service provider CSP environments in a bid to exfiltrate sensitive data. "Organizations often store a variety of data in SaaS applications and use services from CSPs," Pa...

Indian Government Rescues 250 Citizens Forced into Cybercrime in Cambodia

The Indian government said it has rescued and repatriated about 250 citizens in Cambodia who were held captive and coerced into running cyber scams. The Indian nationals "were lured with employment opportunities to that country but were forced to undertake illegal cyber work," the Ministry of...

Lessons from a Ransomware Attack against the British Library

You might think that libraries are kind of boring, but this self-analysis of a 2023 ransomware and extortion attack against the British Library is anything but...

German Police Seize 'Nemesis Market' in Major International Darknet Raid

German authorities have announced the takedown of an illicit underground marketplace called Nemesis Market that peddled narcotics, stolen data, and various cybercrime services. The Federal Criminal Police Office aka Bundeskriminalamt or BKA said it seized the digital infrastructure associated wit...

Ukraine Arrests Trio for Hijacking Over 100 Million Email and Instagram Accounts

The Cyber Police of Ukraine has arrested three individuals on suspicion of hijacking more than 100 million emails and Instagram accounts from users across the world. The suspects, aged between 20 and 40, are said to be part of an organized criminal group living in different parts of the country. ...

LockBit Ransomware Hacker Ordered to Pay $860,000 After Guilty Plea in Canada

A 34-year-old Russian-Canadian national has been sentenced to nearly four years in jail in Canada for his participation in the LockBit global ransomware operation. Mikhail Vasiliev, an Ontario resident, was originally arrested in November 2022 and charged by the U.S. Department of Justice DoJ wit...

There Are Dark Corners of the Internet. Then There's 764

A global network of violent predators is hiding in plain sight, targeting children on major platforms, grooming them, and extorting them to commit horrific acts of abuse...

Incognito Darknet Market Mass-Extorts Buyers, Sellers

Borrowing from the playbook of ransomware purveyors, the darknet narcotics bazaar Incognito Market has begun extorting all of its vendors and buyers, threatening to publish cryptocurrency transaction and chat records of users who refuse to pay a fee ranging from $100 to $20,000. The bold mass...

GhostSec and Stormous Join Forces for a Ransomware Blitz

Summary: The GhostSec and Stormous ransomware factions have launched a sophisticated campaign. Introducing the GhostLocker 2.0 ransomware and the STMXGhostLocker ransomware-as-a-service RaaS initiative, these groups employ double extortion tactics, posing a significant threat to businesses...

You’re going to start seeing more tax-related spam, but remember, that doesn’t actually mean there’s more spam

Its that time of the year when not only do you have to be worried about filing your federal taxes in the U.S., you must also be on the lookout for a whole manner of tax-related scams. These are something that pop up every year through email, texts, phone calls and even physical mail -- phony...

Alert: GhostSec and Stormous Launch Joint Ransomware Attacks in Over 15 Countries

The cybercrime group called GhostSec has been linked to a Golang variant of a ransomware family called GhostLocker. "TheGhostSec and Stormous ransomware groups are jointly conducting double extortion ransomware attacks on various business verticals in multiple countries," Cisco Talos researcher...

BlackCat Ransomware Group Implodes After Apparent $22M Payment by Change Healthcare

There are indications that U.S. healthcare giant Change Healthcare has made a $22 million extortion payment to the infamous BlackCat ransomware group a.k.a. "ALPHV" as the company struggles to bring services back online amid a cyberattack that has disrupted prescription drug services nationwide f...