Security News > 2023 > November > Black Basta ransomware made over $100 million from extortion
Russia-linked ransomware gang Black Basta has raked in at least $100 million in ransom payments from more than 90 victims since it first surfaced in April 2022, according to joint research from Corvus Insurance and Elliptic.
Over 329 victims worldwide were targeted by the cybercrime operation in double extortion attacks where the gang's affiliates steal sensitive data from compromised systems before deploying ransomware payloads across the targets' networks to encrypt hacked systems.
"Based on the number of known victims listed on Black Basta's leak site through Q3 of 2023, our data indicates that at least 35% of known Black Basta victims paid a ransom."
After the notorious Conti ransomware gang shut down operations in June 2022 due to a series of embarrassing data breaches, the cybercrime syndicate split into multiple groups, with one faction believed to be Black Basta.
"The level of sophistication by its proficient ransomware operators, and reluctance to recruit or advertise on Dark Web forums, supports why many suspect the nascent Black Basta may even be a rebrand of the Russian-speaking RaaS threat group Conti, or also linked to other Russian-speaking cyber threat groups."
Toronto Public Library outages caused by Black Basta ransomware attack.