Security News > 2024 > August > Fortune 50 biz coughed up record-breaking $75M ransom to halt leak of stolen data

An unnamed Fortune 50 corporation paid a stonking $75 million to a ransomware gang to stop it leaking terabytes of stolen data.

In September 2023, Dark Angels used a RagnarLocker variant to encrypt international conglomerate Johnson Controls' data, and demanded a $51 million ransom.

The gang, which was previously using a strain of the Babuk ransomware, claimed to have stolen at least 27TB of information, and attacked the org's virtual machines running on VMware ESXi.

Brett Stone-Gross, senior director of threat intelligence at Zscaler, told The Register on Thursday the gang has operated for just a couple of years.

If a payment isn't made and data is leaked as a result, that may intensify legal action against the victim by its own customers or partners, which happens in the US where ransomware attacks doubled last year, according to Zscaler.

The UK saw attacks rise 50 percent, we're told.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/02/dark_angels_ransomware/