Corporate manager CWT paid $4.5 million in ransom this week to hackers who claimed to have taken control of 30,000 corporate computers and two terabytes of data, Reuters reported Friday (July 31).
The press service said it learned of the main points of negotiations between CWT, in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and unidentified hackers, as discussions took place in a publicly available chat room.
Reuters reported that the thieves first searched for $10 million before settling for $4.5 million, and it is unclear whether personal visitor knowledge was compromised by the attack.
A CWT representative told the press service: “Although the investigation is at an early stage, we have no indication that identifiable data/customer and traveller data has been compromised.”
Reuters reported that the hackers were a software called RagnarLocker. According to PC security company McAfee, the criminals have been RagnarLocker since 2019.
“RagnarLocker is a simple ransomware, much like others that exist in the criminal market. Due to its small size, its operator’s aggressive behavior and the knowledge they seem to have that allows them to enter the networks of enterprises, as well as the threat to leak information if the ransom is not paid, RagnarLocker could potentially become a big threat in the future,” McAfee states on its website. “Time will tell if RagnarLocker becomes a serious threat or disappears against a backdrop of other ransomware with more resources. The code is medium in quality.”
Hacking computers like RagnarLocker paints on components preventing valid PC users from performing functional backups. Security experts say one way to thwart such attacks is to keep backups offsite that cannot be compromised through an attack on an organization’s host system.
On Thursday, July 30, the FBI alerted organizations around the world to give the impression that a type of ransomware attack was accumulating.
The coup for CWT comes when commercial agencies have begun to see renewed business interest in businessArray
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