CYBER SECURITY

How attackers ramp up the pressure to pay

Ransomware attackers are implementing a wide range of ruthless pressure tactics to persuade victims to pay the ransom.

Below are the top 10 ways that attackers are increasing pressure on their ransomware victims to get them to pay the ransom:

• Stealing data and threatening to publish or auction it online

• Emailing and calling employees, including senior executives, threatening to reveal their personal information

• Notifying or threatening to notify business partners, customers, the media, and more of the data breach and exfiltration

• Silencing victims by warning them not to contact the authorities

• Recruiting insiders to help them breach networks

• Resetting passwords

• Phishing attacks targeting victim email accounts

• Deleting online backups and shadow volume copies

• Printing physical copies of the ransom note on all connected devices, including point of sale terminals

• Launching distributed denial-of-service attacks against the target’s website

The article explains each tactic in more detail, with examples of ransomware groups that have deployed that tactic. The article also includes advice on what defenders can do to protect their organisation and employees from attacker behaviors and cyberthreats in general.

Further information on attacker behaviours, real-world incident reports and advice for security operations professionals is available on Sophos News SecOps.

Tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), and more, for different types of ransomware are available on SophosLab Uncut, the home of Sophos’ latest threat intelligence.