The first ransomware attack that hit the headlines and grabbed the attention of most in the world is the incident that took place on the servers of ISS World in Feb this year. The Denmark-based Facilities Management Company incurred a loss of $106 million in the file encrypting malware attack and recovered from it on a complete note after a time frame of 45 days. No ransom was paid by the victim.
Second, is the ransomware incident that took place on the servers of Cognizant and estimates are in that the tech giant might have spent anywhere between $60 million to $73 million as recovery and mitigation costs. Highly placed sources say that the costs might increase as the company needs to spend more on the legal and consulting costs.
Travelex ransomware attack that took place on the New Year’s of last year is reported to have incurred $2.3 million loss to the company. And the money exchange shop paid a ransom of 286 bitcoins that helped the company recover its data assets.
A file encrypting malware attack was launched on the servers of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and the school of medicine responded that it paid $1.14 million to the hackers to unlock the data. However, an update posted on the twitter account of UCSF confirmed that no data related to patients or the vaccine development for COVID-19 was impacted in the attack.
Noted Entertainment Company Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks was also in the news headlines for becoming a victim of cyber attack. And news was out that the law firm was hit by REvil Ransomware, where hackers stole nearly 800 GB of data and published it online as the victim failed to pay the ransom. As the firm could not recover data from backups, it paid $365,000 as ransom to the hackers to return the decryption key. Lady Gaga, Donald Trump, Christina Aguilera, Ella Mai, Mariah Carrey, Nicky Minaj, Madonna are some celebrity personalities whose data was reportedly accessed by the hackers.
