Security News > 2020 > May > Maze ransomware one year on – a SophosLabs report

SophosLabs just published an informative report entitled Maze ransomware: extorting victims for 1 year and counting.

Sadly, Maze has been in the news quite frequently in recent months, notably because the gang who created it have been in the vanguard of a new wave of "Double-whammy" ransomware attacks.

So the crooks could embed the public key right in their ransomware program, as long as they kept the private key to themselves.

As SophosLabs explains in the new report, the Maze crew was one of the first ransomware gangs out there to turn to a combination of blackmail and extortion, demanding that victims pay what is effectively hush money as well as a kidnap ransom.

With modern ransomware attacks typically targeting one organisation at a time, and with the Maze crew reportedly going after ransom payments running into hundreds of bitcoins, which comes out at millions of dollars, you can see why these crooks are willing to take time to steal victims' data first.

News URL

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/05/12/maze-ransomware-one-year-on-a-sophoslabs-report/