46: New Threats On The Block?

A plethora of articles have been lighting up our newsfeeds and letting us know that there are new threats on the block: killware, RansomCloud, and extortion. 

Killware: the next thing we need to worry about. Apparently this is defined as anything that has an outcome resulting in death…Seems quite broad really, and ranges from hackers targeting a water treatment plant and poisoning the water flow to a ransomware attack that takes a hospital offline, forcing patients to be rerouted. It’s less about the technique and more about the outcome. 

RansomCloud: Kev gets into a good ranty flow on this one. Kevin Mitnick coined the term “RansomCloud” in a video a few years ago – and honestly, Kev (*our* Kev) does the best job of explaining the “threat”, so we won’t try to explain it here. Just listen to the episode. 

Extortion: the one comes off the back of the Twitch takedown, which highlighted the idea that it is as beneficial to a cyber criminal to access a trove of useful sensitive personal data and look to extort a company for that as it is to go through the effort of ransomware. Double extortion – which you can read about here – is already a thing, so this technique is almost a step back. Or is it? 

So what does the team think? Are these threats, risks, or just a bit of good old-fashioned FUD? Is Ransomware a thing of the past – or is it still the big bad wolf of cyber? 

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https://securityboulevard.com/2021/10/killware-hype-is-bigger-than-the-threat-for-now/

https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/14/twitch-takedown-is-extortion-the-new-ransomware/

https://research.nccgroup.com/2021/10/11/snapmc-skips-ransomware-steals-data/

https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-governments-turn-tables-ransomware-gang-revil-by-pushing-it-offline-2021-10-21/