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Web sites run by the ransomware gang REvil all of a sudden turned unreachable on Tuesday, sparking widespread hypothesis that the group had been knocked offline.
The Russia-linked cybercrime ring has collected tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in ransom funds in return for restoring pc programs it has hacked. In current weeks it claimed duty for a sprawling ransomware outbreak that affected an estimated 800 to 1,500 companies worldwide.
Ransomware websites will be unreliable, and it was unclear whether or not the location’s disappearance was a momentary fluke or whether or not the hackers had downed instruments or been faraway from the web by another person. Each the group’s cost portal and its weblog, which named and shamed their victims who refused to pay the ransoms they demanded, had been unreachable.
The White Home declined remark. An try to succeed in REvil, one in every of whose representatives briefly spoke with Reuters final week, was unsuccessful.
The disappearance shouldn’t be essentially vital.
Vanishing acts are frequent within the ransomware world, the place gangs are likely to disappear and rebrand after they start attracting an excessive amount of warmth.
REvil was already drawing top-level US authorities consideration, and strain has been mounting on Washington to take extra decisive motion in opposition to REvil and teams prefer it.
The US has been hit by a string of high-profile hacks by ransom-seeking cybercriminals, together with an intrusion into Colonial Pipeline which disrupted gasoline deliveries throughout the East Coast.
US President Joe Biden hinted on Friday america might take extra aggressive motion quickly the place ransomware was involved.
Requested by a Reuters correspondent on Friday whether or not it will make sense to assault the Russian servers utilized in such intrusions, Biden paused, smiled and stated: “Sure.”
For the top of 1 cybersecurity firm, the likelihood that somebody – the US authorities or in any other case – knocked the group offline raised some considerations.
“If this was an organised cyber offensive, I’m hopeful that collateral harm was a consideration,” stated Kurtis Minder, the founding father of risk intelligence agency GroupSense.
Ransomware-seeking criminals and their victims are in some methods co-dependent, with the unhealthy actors holding the keys to their victims’ encrypted information. Ought to these keys have been misplaced or destroyed in a cyberattack “many corporations, people are going to have a tricky time recovering,” he stated.
Wrecking a cybercriminal server or two was not sustainable in the long term, he added.
“REvil is one in every of dozens of main ransomware operators,” he stated. “Are we going to assault all of them?”
© Thomson Reuters 2021
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