ransomware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Ransomware doesn’t hit all at once—it slowly floods your defenses in stages. Like a ship subsumed with water, the attack starts quietly, below the surface, with subtle warning signs that are easy to miss. By the time encryption starts, it’s too late to stop the flood.  Each stage of a ransomware attack offers a small window to detect and stop the threat before it’s too late. The problem is most organizations aren’t monitoring for early warning signs - allowing attackers to quietly disable backups, escalate privileges, and evade detection until encryption locks everything down. By the time the ransomware note appears, your opportunities are gone.  Let’s unpack the stages of a ransomware attack, how to stay resilient amidst constantly morphing indicators of compromise (IOCs), and why constant validation of your defense is a must to stay resilient. The Three Stages of a Ransomware Attack - and How to Detect It Ransomware attacks don’t happen instantly. Attackers follow a st...

A previously unknown threat activity cluster targeted European organizations, particularly those in the healthcare sector, to deploy PlugX and its successor, ShadowPad, with the intrusions ultimately leading to deployment of a ransomware called NailaoLocker in some cases. The campaign, codenamed Green Nailao by Orange Cyberdefense CERT, involved the exploitation of a now-patched security flaw in Check Point network gateway security products ( CVE-2024-24919 , CVSS score: 7.5). The attacks were observed between June and October 2024. "The campaign relied on DLL search-order hijacking to deploy ShadowPad and PlugX – two implants often associated with China-nexus targeted intrusions," the company said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. The initial access afforded by exploitation of vulnerable Check Point instances is said to have allowed the threat actors to retrieve user credentials and to connect to the VPN using a legitimate account. In the next stage,...

Welcome to this week’s Cybersecurity News Recap. Discover how cyber attackers are using clever tricks like fake codes and sneaky emails to gain access to sensitive data. We cover everything from device code phishing to cloud exploits, breaking down the technical details into simple, easy-to-follow insights. ⚡ Threat of the Week Russian Threat Actors Leverage Device Code Phishing to Hack Microsoft Accounts — Microsoft and Volexity have revealed that threat actors with ties to Russia are leveraging a technique known as device code phishing to gain unauthorized access to victim accounts, and use that access to get hold of sensitive data and enable persistent access to the victim environment. At least three different Russia-linked clusters have been identified abusing the technique to date. The attacks entail sending phishing emails that masquerade as Microsoft Teams meeting invitations, which, when clicked, urge the message recipients to authenticate using a threat actor-generated dev...

The threat actors behind the RansomHub ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) scheme have been observed leveraging now-patched security flaws in Microsoft Active Directory and the Netlogon protocol to escalate privileges and gain unauthorized access to a victim network's domain controller as part of their post-compromise strategy. "RansomHub has targeted over 600 organizations globally, spanning sectors such as healthcare, finance, government, and critical infrastructure, firmly establishing it as the most active ransomware group in 2024," Group-IB analysts said in an exhaustive report published this week. The ransomware group first emerged in February 2024, acquiring the source code associated with the now-defunct Knight (formerly Cyclops) RaaS gang from the RAMP cybercrime forum to speed up its operations. About five months later, an updated version of the locker was advertised on the illicit marketplace with capabilities to remotely encrypt data via SFTP protocol. It co...

An RA World ransomware attack in November 2024 targeting an unnamed Asian software and services company involved the use of a malicious tool exclusively used by China-based cyber espionage groups, raising the possibility that the threat actor may be moonlighting as a ransomware player in an individual capacity. "During the attack in late 2024, the attacker deployed a distinct toolset that had previously been used by a China-linked actor in classic espionage attacks," the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "In all the prior intrusions involving the toolset, the attacker appeared to be engaged in classic espionage, seemingly solely interested in maintaining a persistent presence on the targeted organizations by installing backdoors." This included a July 2024 compromise of the Foreign Ministry of a country in southeastern Europe that involved the use of classic DLL side-loading techniques to deploy PlugX ...

Source: The Nation A coordinated law enforcement operation has taken down the dark web data leak and negotiation sites associated with the 8Base ransomware gang. Visitors to the data leak site are now greeted with a seizure banner that says: "This hidden site and the criminal content have been seized by the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office on behalf of the Office of the Public Prosecutor General in Bamberg." The takedown involved the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA), the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Europol, as well as agencies from Bavaria, Belgium, Czechia, France, Germany, Japan, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and Thailand. Thai media reports have revealed that four European nationals – two men and two women – were arrested across four different locations on Monday as part of an effort codenamed Operation Phobos Aetor. The identities of the suspects were not disclosed. Authorities are said to have seized more than 40 pieces of evidence, including ...

In cybersecurity, the smallest crack can lead to the biggest breaches. A leaked encryption key, an unpatched software bug, or an abandoned cloud storage bucket—each one seems minor until it becomes the entry point for an attack. This week, we’ve seen cybercriminals turn overlooked weaknesses into major security threats, proving once again that no system is too small to be targeted. The question isn’t whether attackers will find a way in—it’s whether you’ll be prepared when they do. Let’s break down what you need to know. ⚡ Threat of the Week Microsoft Warns of Attacks Exploiting ASP.NET Machine Keys — Threat actors are exploiting publicly disclosed ASP.NET machine keys to inject and execute malicious code responsible for launching the Godzilla post-exploitation framework. Microsoft said it has identified over 3,000 publicly disclosed keys that could be used for these types of attacks dubbed ViewState code injection. The company also said it removed key-related artifacts from ...

Threat actors have been observed exploiting recently disclosed security flaws in SimpleHelp's Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) software as a precursor for what appears to be a ransomware attack. The intrusion leveraged the now-patched vulnerabilities to gain initial access and maintain persistent remote access to an unspecified target network, cybersecurity company Field Effect said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The attack involved the quick and deliberate execution of several post-compromise tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) including network and system discovery, administrator account creation, and the establishment of persistence mechanisms, which could have led to the deployment of ransomware," security researchers Ryan Slaney and Daniel Albrecht said . The vulnerabilities in question, CVE-2024-57726, CVE-2024-57727, and CVE-2024-57728 , were disclosed by Horizon3.ai last month. Successful exploitation of the security holes could allow f...

Ransomware attacks netted cybercrime groups a total of $813.5 million in 2024, a decline from $1.25 billion in 2023. The total amount extorted during the first half of 2024 stood at $459.8 million, blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis said, adding payment activity slumped after July 2024 by about 3.94%. "The number of ransomware events increased into H2, but on-chain payments declined, suggesting that more victims were targeted, but fewer paid," the company said . Adding to the challenges is an increasingly fragmented ransomware ecosystem, which, in the wake of the collapse of LockBit and BlackCat, has led to the emergence of a lot of newcomers that have eschewed big game hunting in favor of small- to mid-size entities that, in turn, translate to more modest ransom demands. According to data compiled by Coveware, the average ransomware payment in Q4 2024 was at $553,959, up from $479,237 in Q3 . The median ransomware payment, in contrast, dropped from $200,000 to $...

You arrive at the office, power up your system, and panic sets in. Every file is locked, and every system is frozen. A ransom demand flashes on your screen: "Pay $2 million in Bitcoin within 48 hours or lose everything." And the worst part is that even after paying, there’s no guarantee you’ll get your data back. Many victims hand over the money, only to receive nothing in return, or worse, get hit again. This isn’t a rare case. Ransomware attacks are crippling businesses worldwide, from hospitals and banks to small companies. The only way to stop the damage is by proactively analyzing suspicious files and links before they can be executed. Below, we break down the top three ransomware families active in 2025: LockBit, Lynx, and Virlock, and find out how interactive analysis helps businesses detect and stop them before it’s too late. LockBit: Teasing a Comeback in 2025 LockBit is one of the most notorious ransomware groups, known for its highly efficient encryption, do...

Attack surfaces are growing faster than security teams can keep up – to stay ahead, you need to know what’s exposed and where attackers are most likely to strike. With cloud adoption dramatically increasing the ease of exposing new systems and services to the internet, prioritizing threats and managing your attack surface from an attacker’s perspective has never been more important. In this guide, we look at why attack surfaces are growing and how to monitor and manage them properly with  tools like Intruder . Let’s dive in. What is your attack surface? First, it’s important to understand what we mean when we talk about an attack surface. An attack surface is the sum of your digital assets that are ‘reachable’ by an attacker – whether they are secure or vulnerable, known or unknown, in active use or not. You can also have both internal and external attack surfaces - imagine for example a malicious email attachment landing in a colleague’s inbox, vs a new FTP server being...