Sodinokibi data auctions highlight changing criminal tactics

By Alex Scroxton for ComputerWeekly
Wednesday, June 3, 2020

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But Ilia Kolochenko, a criminal justice and cyber crime investigation expert and founder of web security firm ImmuniWeb, went further by saying that, in many cases, he doubted the quality and credibility of some of the offers being made on auction sites.

“An interesting trend in today’s cyber crime landscape is fake threats to publish allegedly stolen data,” he said. “Many organisations, whose business largely depends on their reputation, are well prepared to pay a fortune to avoid negative publicity.

“Another relatively new, but rapidly growing, scenario is exaggeration of the nature or value of data stolen and encrypted by ransomware. Organisations have limited visibility of their attack surface, including corporate data, which is chaotically dispersed across computers and servers.

“Once a machine is hacked and encrypted, victims may well believe that attackers will find a backup of their database, critical source code or other important trade secrets. However, prior to paying a ransom, you should carefully investigate, analyse and assess the situation to avoid falling victim to manipulative fraudsters.”

Kolochenko added: “Sadly, the coronavirus pandemic has pushed many beginners in the IT field to become cyber criminals amid unemployment and lack of finding a well-paid job in their field. Thus, we will likely see a surge of fake extortion campaigns ventured by the newbies and aimed to strip organisations out of cash in a simple and swift manner.” Read Full Article