Security News > 2023 > October > Feds hopelessly behind the times on ransomware trends in alert to industry

An urgent ransomware warning from the Feds has some industry analysts scratching their heads and wondering if Uncle Sam's noggin has been buried in the sand for too long.

On September 27, the FBI issued a security alert about "Two trends emerging across the ransomware environment." The first, according to agents, is dual ransomware infections.

The Feds described the other emerging trend as "New data destruction tactics" being used by miscreants when infecting networks with ransomware.

As to the dual-ransomware trend, Emsisoft's team issued its own PSA about criminals encrypting data using multiple ransomware strains back over two years ago.

Mandiant's incident response team has "Intermittently" assisted in incidents where multiple ransomware variants have been deployed, or a criminal uses data wipers or other destructive actions when negotiations break down, Jeremy Kennelly, senior principal analyst at the the Google-owned security biz, told us.

"When extortion negotiations break down it is very common for actors deploying ransomware to threaten drastic action against an impacted organization, and it is plausible that certain threat groups are starting to lean more heavily on network disruption rather than highlighting the sensitivity of stolen or leaked data, however these two strategies have always co-existed across the ransomware ecosystem," he added.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/10/02/feds_ransomware_report/