You might think that after the recent hack of the Colonial Pipeline, with all eyes on some of the world’s largest cybercriminal gangs, that cybercrime would show a decline in activity. However, it is quite the opposite. Darkside, the Russian-affiliated hacker gang recently hacked the pipeline causing them to shut down operations for five days, which then lead to a gas shortage.
Darkside ended up collecting around $4.4 Million dollars in ransom from Colonial Pipeline and claimed that the attack was “apolitical” on its main website. Darkside is only one of many cybercrime gangs that are still active and becoming more active even after having all eyes on their exploits. These groups are still actively extorting many U.S. organizations, who are continuing to pay these ransoms even though there is no guarantee that doing so will result in the ability to regain control of their infostructure.
These gangs like Darkside make their money by infecting organizations’ servers with ransomware that in turn locks the organization out of their own network by encrypting and stealing files, making them unusable and even threatening to publish private information until the ransom is paid. However, there is no guarantee that even after these organizations pay the ransom to these hackers that the organization will regain control of their network without any reputable damage.
Gangs have still been actively extorting organizations such as hospitals, travel technology companies, and even farming equipment manufacturers. These gangs have published files from these organizations as punishment for non-payment. Even though websites of several smaller ransomware gangs are shut down by the government agencies trying to combat them, this is not a guarantee that crimes of this nature are likely to slow down any time soon.
If you think you are too small to worry about these cyber-criminal gangs coming after you, you’re wrong! While a lot of the attacks are intentionally aimed at big corporations, many attacks are just scattershot attacks where completely random IP addresses and email addresses are sent attacks by the billions. If the hackers succeed in a tiny fraction of the time, these random attacks still earn them millions!
The good news is that there are very solid protections you can implement at home and at work to protect yourself, your business, and your employees. These precautions include:
- Don’t recycle passwords – use strong passwords that are unique to every site or system you use.
- Use multi-factor authentication – everywhere it’s possible, turn on the best multifactor authentication methods available.
- Keep EVERYTHING patched – the programs on your computer, the operating system on your computers, and yes, even the internet-connected devices like cameras and thermostats in your network need to be regularly patched and secured.
For a complete list of our current stack of precautions and protections, download our “Core Requirements for Cyber Security Protections in 2021” guide here.
For additional assistance at any time, or to get your questions answered about any cybersecurity-related issue, contact us today here!
Author: Stephanie Reilly – Turn Key Solutions, LLC 2021
Related Posts - TKS Blog
