Although many had never heard of ransomware attacks until a few years ago, they have recently become a topic in mainstream media. A month ago, millions of Americans felt what such an attack can do to society, as media and portals were flooded with video content of 'crazy' Americans pouring gasoline into everything they could get their hands on, including plastic containers typically used for food and even garbage bags.
The reason for such madness was a hacker attack on Colonial Pipeline, which owns the largest oil pipeline in the U.S. More and more companies worldwide are becoming targets of hacker attacks or digital extortion carried out by a type of malicious software generally referred to as ransomware, which locks infected computers and demands money for their release.
More specifically, these are Trojan programs, popularly known as Trojans, whose main and sole purpose is extortion, and the biggest problem with such attacks is that there is no help for them. They most often begin with phishing emails, and once someone opens a malicious file from such an email, the problems begin.
However, let’s return to Colonial Pipeline, which, as a fuel supplier, was forced to halt operations amid an attack by a hacker group called DarkSide. The attack disabled the tracking of fuel distribution, and the technological network controlling the pipeline was also shut down, leading to fuel shortages at gas stations, which caused chaos with plastic bags and containers.
Although Colonial initially refused to negotiate with the attackers, they eventually relented and paid $4.4 million in bitcoins, as it is the only currency that cannot be traced. However, the FBI was able to recover part of Colonial’s ransom, as they managed to seize about $2.3 million from the hackers a month after the attack, although it has not yet been disclosed how they achieved this.
According to data from Trend Micro, a company specializing in internet security, ransomware attacks in 2020 primarily targeted the government and banking sectors. The government sector of various countries was attacked in 31,906 cases, the banking sector in 22,082 cases, manufacturing recorded 17,071 attacks, healthcare 15,701 cases, the financial sector 4,971 attack cases, education 4,578 cases, technology 4,216 cases, the food and beverage industry 3,702 cases, oil and gas 2,281 cases, and 2,002 recorded cases of attacks on the insurance sector.
The largest ransom ever paid by a company to hackers amounts to a staggering $40 million. This was paid by CNA Financial Corp., which at the end of March this year paid $40 million to regain control over its network after a ransomware virus attack. The Chicago-based company paid the hackers approximately two weeks after a large amount of data was stolen.
