teissTalk: Threat trends – double extortion ransomware

teissTalk host Jenny Radcliffe was joined by Johann Van Duyn, Chief Information Security Officer, DO & CO, Todd Wade Chief Information Security Officer, Sokin, and Adam Kujawa, Security Evangelist, Malwarebytes.

Views on news
The good news is that the FBI seized bitcoin worth just over $2 million in August from a digital wallet allegedly traceable to attacks carried out by the REvil ransomware gang. The bad news is that this can’t be more than 1 per cent of all the funds that malicious actors have recently extorted. There were 314 double extortion victims just in October – a 65 per cent increase on September. In double-extortion attacks cyber criminals steal some data and threaten to release it to the public or sell it in addition to encrypting the rest of the organisation’s data.

It’s also been reported that some actors now don’t bother to encrypt data – they “only” steal it and hold it for ransom. Just like anything in business, ransomware attacks are dominated by shifting trends, where encryption’s role is ebbing and flowing.