An Interest In:
Web News this Week
- March 31, 2024
- March 30, 2024
- March 29, 2024
- March 28, 2024
- March 27, 2024
- March 26, 2024
- March 25, 2024
December 11, 2019 10:50 pm
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/tVYZZTMInA4/maze-ransomware-was-behind-pensacola-cyber-event-florida-officials-say
Maze Ransomware Was Behind Pensacola 'Cyber Event,' Florida Officials Say
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An email sent by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to all Florida county commissioners indicated that the ransomware that struck the city of Pensacola on December 7 was the same malware used in an attack against the private security firm Allied Universal, according to a report by the Pensacola News Journal. That malware has been identified elsewhere as Maze, a form of ransomware that has also been distributed via spam email campaigns in Italy. Bleeping Computer's Lawrence Abrams reported in November that the Maze operators had contacted him after the Allied Universal attack, claiming to have stolen files from the company before encrypting them on the victims' computers. After Allied apparently missed the deadline for payment of the ransom on the files, the ransomware operators published 700 megabytes of files from Allied and demanded 300 Bitcoins (approximately $2.3 million) to decrypt the network. The Maze operators told Abrams that they always steal victims' files to use as further leverage to get them to pay: "It is just a logic. If we disclose it who will believe us? It is not in our interest, it will be silly to disclose as we gain nothing from it. We also delete data because it is not really interesting. We are neither espionage group nor any other type of APT, the data is not interesting for us." "The use of the data to blackmail the victim, and in Allied's case, the threat to use Allied's certificates and domain name to spam customers with additional ransomware attacks, is something new," writes Sean Gallagher. "This is the first time this has ever happened, as far as we know," said Brett Callow, a spokesperson for the antivirus software vendor Emisoft. "Ransomware groups usually encrypt, not steal. We expect data exfiltration to become more and more commonplace. Whether Pensacola's data was exfiltrated, I obviously can't say."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/tVYZZTMInA4/maze-ransomware-was-behind-pensacola-cyber-event-florida-officials-say
Share this article:
Tweet
View Full Article
Slashdot
Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..More About this Source Visit Slashdot