Security News > 2020 > August > US liquor giant hit by ransomware – what the rest of us can do to help

US hard liquor giant Brown-Forman is the latest high-profile victim of ransomware criminals.

It's a multi-billion dollar business, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky - a US state that's famous for American whiskey - and you can see why today's big-money ransomware crooks might go after a company of that size and sort.

As you can imagine, the exposure of the alleged perpetrators by US law enforcement pretty much drove the SamSam crooks out of business, albeit not before they had extorted millions of dollars from victims around the world, but ultimately didn't make much of a dent in ransomware attacks in general.

Today's ransomware is turning into old-school, out-and-out blackmail: the crooks promise to delete the data they already stole, and thereby to "Prevent" your ransomware incident turning into a publicly visible data breach, but you have no way of knowing whether they will keep their promise.

To reward companies that are willing to say, "We won't pay," and who help to break the feedback that keeps the ransomware cycle turning, we suggest that you repay them by making sure that if their data does get dumped by crooks.

News URL

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/08/18/us-liquor-giant-hit-by-ransomware-what-the-rest-of-us-can-do-to-help/