LockBit Ransomware was identified as the top extortion gang in the world as it topped the cyber threat list in United States and 6 other countries. According to an advisory published by American CISA the said file encrypting malware spreading gang was being widely used by cyber criminals who amassed about $91 million in the Biden led nation, alone.
The advisory which was endorsed by FBI and MS-ISAC, the said group of ransomware spreading criminals were involved in extortion in nations like Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.
Lockbit spread was observed in over 1700 ransomware spread incidents out of 3000 witnessed and analyzed in the year 2022 in US alone.
Though the criminals were taking a back-step due to stringent cryptocurrency tracking measures taken up by the law enforcement agencies across the world, their earnings weren’t disturbed in the past few years, especially after the Covid 19 lockdowns were observed on a global note.
“There was a dip in attacks for sure, but the victims who were targeted were forced to pay high, thus, balancing the balance sheet of earnings for the dreaded malware spreading gang”, said Brett Callow of Emsisoft.
Concerningly, out of the 1700 attacks observed in America, about 70 of them were launched on the same victim twice and 3 of them were observed to hit the same target, thrice.
It means, as the victims failed to take appropriate measures to bolster their security, the criminals targeted some of them by exploiting the same vulnerability.
NOTE- In the year 2019, FBI issued an advisory in which it clearly urged all the ransomware victims to avoid paying a ransom. This was because there was no guaranty that they will return the decryption key for sure and will delete the stolen data, in case of double extortion attacks. Instead, using data backups for information recovery and data continuity makes complete sense, say experts.
