News June 28, 2023

Spot fake extortion attacks without wasting time and money

4 min read - Ransomware attacks — the scourge of businesses, schools, hospitals and other organizations — follow a familiar pattern. Shady criminals contact an organization, telling them their company or customer data has been breached, encrypted and/or exfiltrated. Pay us money, or we’ll…

News June 5, 2023

$10.3 billion in cyber crime losses shatters previous totals

4 min read - The introduction of the most recent FBI Internet Crime Report says, “At the FBI, we know ‘cyber risk is business risk’ and ‘cybersecurity is national security.’” And the numbers in the report back up this statement. The FBI report details…

Malware June 2, 2021

Cyber Extortion: What You Need to Know in 2021

4 min read - Over the years, the term ransomware has taken on a new meaning for many businesses and local governments. This used to be considered a relatively new and emerging form of malware. Now, attackers have transformed it into a sophisticated and aggressive form…

News February 17, 2021

When Cyber Gangs Disregard Ransomware Payments, Victims Can Be Hit Twice

2 min read - Several digital gangs have gone back on their pledge to honor the ransomware payments made by victims. The Digital Criminals Who Went Against Their Word In its Quarterly Ransomware Report for Q3 2020, Coveware notes that nearly half of the…

Malware October 10, 2018

The Many Faces of Necurs: How the Botnet Spewed Millions of Spam Emails for Cyber Extortion

5 min read - IBM X-Force researchers observed the Necurs botnet spewing millions of spam emails from more than 30,000 malicious IPs to extort bitcoin from victims who may or may not have viewed adult content.

Risk Management September 21, 2016

The Growing Threat of Cyber Extortion

2 min read - In the shadowy world of security threats and bad actors, cyber extortion is a growing trend. Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the vulnerability of intellectual property, threatening to release potentially embarrassing information and encrypting data to render it useless to…

Advanced Threats January 28, 2016

Pay Us the Money or the Website Gets It: Extortion by DDoS

4 min read - Organized groups are using distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks as a way to threaten companies and carry out cyber extortion.

Network July 15, 2015

DDoS Extortion: Easy and Lucrative

6 min read - Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks can vex organizations in a number of ways. Learn how to secure your networks and respond appropriately.

July 9, 2015

Operation Kofer Signals the New Commoditization of Ransomware

3 min read - A new type of ransomware called Kofer poses a severe threat to Internet users on a global scale, but it's just the tip of the malware iceberg.

July 30, 2014

Ransomware and Cyber Extortion: What You Need to Know and Do

3 min read - Today, cyber criminals are applying ancient approaches to modern technologies by using ransomware and cyber extortion to demand money from victims.