October 22, 2021

All extortion gangs called on to attack US interests by Groove ransomware gang

On Friday 22nd of October 2021, the Groove ransomware gang released a Russian blog post in Russian which calls for all other ransomware operations to target US interests. This blog comes about after REvil was taken down because of an international law enforcement operation that included support from the FBI. “I urge not to attack Chinese companies, because where do […]
October 22, 2021

A data breach investigated by GPDP after ransomware attack on SIAE

On Thursday 21st of October 2021, the Italian data protection authority Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali (GPDP) announced they were investigating a data breach of Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori which is Italy’s copyright protection government agency. Currently the GPDP is stating that the investigation is looking at whether threat actors were able to steal the personal […]
October 21, 2021

Evil Corp launch new Macaw Locker ransomware to evade US sanctions

Recently, a new ransomware called Macaw Locker launched by Evil Corp, has entered the ransomware space. It is believed that Evil Corp have released this new ransomware to evade US sanctions that prevent victims from making ransom payments. This is not the first time that Evil Corp have released a new ransomware to evade the US sanctions that were placed […]
October 21, 2021

Carbanak hacking group enters ransomware space by creating a fake cybersecurity company

On Thursday 21st of October 2021, researchers at Gemini Advisory released a blog detailing evidence that FIN7 (aka ‘Carbanak’) hacking group has set up a fake cybersecurity company known as Bastion Security which was being used to hire pentesters and system administrators to conduct pre-encryption stages of ransomware attacks. Researchers discovered Bastion Security website was made up of stolen and […]
October 21, 2021

Ecuador’s largest bank’s system shut down for multiple days after cyber attack

During the weekend of the 10th of October 2021, Banco Pichincha, Ecuador’s largest private bank experienced a cyberattack that led to disruption to their operations and meant that their ATM and online banking portal was taken offline. Due to the shutdown of their IT system, employees are notified that bank applications, email, digital channels, and self-services will not be operational […]
October 19, 2021

Free BlackByte ransomware decryptor released after AES encryption key was reused

On Thursday 15th of October 2021, a free decryptor for the BlackByte ransomware and a SpiderLabs blog detailing the process of decrypting the ransomware was released to the public to allow past victims to recover their files for free. Researchers had found that the ransomware was downloading an image file called ‘forest.png’ from a remote malicious site under the control […]
October 18, 2021

Attacks on ten Israeli hospitals attributed to Chinese threat actors

On the 17th of October 2021, the Ministry of Health and the National Cyber Directorate in Israel released a joint announcement details a spike in ransomware attacks over the weekend of the 16th that has seen by targeting systems of nine health institutes in Israel. The Israeli government have stated that the attempts had resulted in no damage to the […]
October 17, 2021

REvil ransomware group’s Tor sites shut down after being hijacked

On the 17th of October 2021, the Tor sites of REvil ransomware gang went offline after an unknown person hijacked the Tor onion domains with the same private keys as REvil’s Tor sites and may have backups of the sites. One of the threat actors “0_neday”, affiliated with the REvil operation has confirmed that someone has hijack the ransomware gang’s […]
October 14, 2021

University of Sunderland experience long-term outage after cyber attack

On Wednesday 13th of October 2021, the University of Sunderland in the UK announced they were experience IT issues that had led to most of their IT systems being taken down. The university stated the IT issues all indicated that they were experiencing a cyber-attack. The first signs of the incident were seen on Tuesday morning but weren’t investigated straight […]