Security News

The LockBit ransomware gang has claimed responsibility for a cyberattack against the German multinational automotive group Continental.Since LockBit says that it will publish "All available" data, this indicates that Continental is yet to negotiate with the ransomware operation or it has already refused to comply with the demands.

Pendragon Group, with more than 200 car dealerships in the U.K., was breached in a cyberattack from the LockBit ransomware gang, who allegedly demanded $60 million to decrypt files and not leak them. Pendragon owns CarStore, Evans Halshaw, and Stratstone luxury car retailer, that sell brands cars for all budgets, from Jaguar, Porsche, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Land Rover, or Aston Martin, to Renault, Ford, Hyundai, Nissan, Peugeot, Vauxhall, Citroen, DS, Dacia, and DAF. Pendragon did not provide many details about the security incident and limited the information to saying that there is no impact on operations.

Advanced, a managed software provider to the UK National Health Service, has confirmed that customer data was indeed lifted as part of the attack by cyber baddies that has disrupted operations for months. The incident disrupted healthcare customers, forcing NHS 111 medical services operators, for example, to revert back to pen and paper as digital services went AWOL, sources told us at the time.

Lockbit ransomware affiliates are encrypting victims via Microsoft Exchange servers hacked using exploits targeting unpatched vulnerabilities. In at least one such incident from July 2022, the attackers used a previously deployed web shell on a compromised Exchange server to escalate privileges to Active Directory admin, steal roughly 1.3 TB of data, and encrypt network systems.

The relatively new Bl00Dy Ransomware Gang has started to use a recently leaked LockBit ransomware builder in attacks against companies. Last week, the LockBit 3.0 ransomware builder was leaked on Twitter after the LockBit operator had a falling out with his developer.

This week we saw some embarrassment for the LockBit ransomware operation when their programmer leaked a ransomware builder for the LockBit 3.0 encryptor. Ransomware operations were launched in the past from the leaks of the Babuk ransomware builder and Conti source code.

The LockBit ransomware operation has suffered a breach, with an allegedly disgruntled developer leaking the builder for the gang's newest encryptor. After security researcher 3xp0rt shared the tweet about the leaked LockBit 3.0 builder, VX-Underground shared that they were contacted on September 10th by a user named 'protonleaks,' who also shared a copy of the builder.

The DDoS attack last weekend that put a temporary stop to leaking Entrust data was seen as an opportunity to explore the triple extortion tactic to apply more pressure on victims to pay a ransom. LockBitSupp said that the ransomware operator is now looking to add DDoS as an extortion tactic on top of encrypting data and leaking it.

LockBit ransomware gang announced that it is improving defenses against distributed denial-of-service attacks and working to take the operation to triple extortion level.The gang has recently suffered a DDoS attack, allegedly on behalf of digital security giant Entrust, that prevented access to data published on its corporate leaks site.

The LockBit ransomware group last week claimed responsibility for an attack on cybersecurity vendor in June. LockBitSupp, the public face of LockBit that interacts with companies and cybersecurity researchers, told Shukuhi that the group's data leak site was getting 400 requests a second from more than 1,000 servers and that the group promised to add more resources to the site and to "Drain the ddosers money," he wrote.