Companies hit by ransomware often face a dual threat: Even if they avoid paying the ransom and can restore things from scratch, about half the time the attackers also threaten to release sensitive stolen data unless the victim pays for a promise to have the data deleted. Leaving aside the notion that victims might have any real expectation the attackers will actually destroy the stolen data, new research suggests a fair number of victims who do pay up may see some or all of the stolen data published anyway.

The findings come in a report today from Coveware, a company that specializes in helping firms recover from ransomware attacks. Coveware says nearly half of all ransomware cases now include the threat to release exfiltrated data.

“Previously, when a victim of ransomware had adequate backups, they would just restore and go on with life; there was zero reason to even engage with the threat actor,” the report observes. “Now, when a threat actor steals data, a company with perfectly restorable backups is often compelled to at least engage with the threat actor to determine what data was taken.”

Coveware said it has seen ample evidence of victims seeing some or all of their stolen data published after paying to have it deleted; in other cases, the data gets published online before the victim is even given a chance to negotiate a data deletion agreement.

“Unlike negotiating for a decryption key, negotiating for the suppression of stolen data has no finite end,” the report continues. “Once a victim receives a decryption key, it can’t be taken away and does not degrade with time. With stolen data, a threat actor can return for a second payment at any point in the future. The track records are too short and evidence that defaults are selectively occurring is already collecting.”

The company said it advises clients never to pay a data deletion ransom, but rather to engage competent privacy attorneys, perform an investigation into what data was stolen, and notify any affected customers according to the advice of counsel and application data breach notification laws.

Fabian Wosar, chief technology officer at computer security firm Emsisoft, said ransomware victims often acquiesce to data publication extortion demands when they are trying to prevent the public from learning about the breach.

“The bottom line is, ransomware is a business of hope,” Wosar said. “The company doesn’t want the data to be dumped or sold. So they pay for it hoping the threat actor deletes the data. Technically speaking, whether they delete the data or not doesn’t matter from a legal point of view. The data was lost at the point when it was exfiltrated.”

Ransomware victims who pay for a digital key to unlock servers and desktop systems encrypted by the malware also are relying on hope, Wosar said, because it’s also not uncommon that a decryption key fails to unlock some or all of the infected machines.

“When you look at a lot of ransom notes, you can actually see groups address this very directly and have texts that say stuff along the lines of, Yeah, you are fucked now. But if you pay us, everything can go back to before we fucked you.'”

Two young men from the eastern United States have been hit with identity theft and conspiracy charges for allegedly stealing bitcoin and social media accounts by tricking employees at wireless phone companies into giving away credentials needed to remotely access and modify customer account information.

Prosecutors say Jordan K. Milleson, 21 of Timonium, Md. and 19-year-old Kingston, Pa. resident Kyell A. Bryan hijacked social media and bitcoin accounts using a mix of voice phishing or “vishing” attacks and “SIM swapping,” a form of fraud that involves bribing or tricking employees at mobile phone companies.

Investigators allege the duo set up phishing websites that mimicked legitimate employee portals belonging to wireless providers, and then emailed and/or called employees at these providers in a bid to trick them into logging in at these fake portals.

According to the indictment (PDF), Milleson and Bryan used their phished access to wireless company employee tools to reassign the subscriber identity module (SIM) tied to a target’s mobile device. A SIM card is a small, removable smart chip in mobile phones that links the device to the customer’s phone number, and their purloined access to employee tools meant they could reassign any customer’s phone number to a SIM card in a mobile device they controlled.

That allowed them to seize control over a target’s incoming phone calls and text messages, which were used to reset the password for email, social media and cryptocurrency accounts tied to those numbers.

Interestingly, the conspiracy appears to have unraveled over a business dispute between the two men. Prosecutors say on June 26, 2019, “Bryan called the Baltimore County Police Department and falsely reported that he, purporting to be a resident of the Milleson family residence, had shot his father at the residence.”

“During the call, Bryan, posing as the purported shooter, threatened to shoot himself and to shoot at police officers if they attempted to confront him,” reads a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland. “The call was a ‘swatting’ attack, a criminal harassment tactic in which a person places a false call to authorities that will trigger a police or special weapons and tactics (SWAT) team response — thereby causing a life-threatening situation.”

The indictment alleges Bryan swatted his alleged partner in retaliation for Milleson failing to share the proceeds of a digital currency theft. Milleson and Bryan are facing charges of wire fraud, unauthorized access to protected computers, aggravated identity theft and wire fraud conspiracy.

The indictment doesn’t specify the wireless companies targeted by the phishing and vishing schemes, but sources close to the investigation tell KrebsOnSecurity the two men were active members of OGusers, an online forum that caters to people selling access to hijacked social media accounts.

Bryan allegedly used the nickname “Champagne” on OGusers. On at least two occasions in the past few years, the OGusers forum was hacked and its user database — including private messages between forum members — were posted online. In a private message dated Nov. 15, 2019, Champagne can be seen asking another OGusers member to create a phishing site mimicking T-Mobile’s employee login page (t-mobileupdates[.]com).

Sources tell KrebsOnSecurity the two men are part of a larger conspiracy involving individuals from the United States and United Kingdom who’ve used vishing and phishing to trick work-at-home employees into giving away credentials needed to remotely access their employers’ networks.

On Monday, Oct. 27, KrebsOnSecurity began following up on a tip from a reliable source that an aggressive Russian cybercriminal gang known for deploying ransomware was preparing to disrupt information technology systems at hundreds of hospitals, clinics and medical care facilities across the United States. Today, officials from the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security hastily assembled a conference call with healthcare industry executives warning about an “imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers.”

The agencies on the conference call, which included the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), warned participants about “credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to US hospitals and healthcare providers.”

The agencies said they were sharing the information “to provide warning to healthcare providers to ensure that they take timely and reasonable precautions to protect their networks from these threats.”

The warning came less than 24 hours after this author received a tip from Alex Holden, founder of Milwaukee-based cyber intelligence firm Hold Security. Holden said he saw online communications this week between cybercriminals affiliated with a Russian-speaking ransomware group known as Ryuk in which group members discussed plans to deploy ransomware at more than 400 healthcare facilities in the U.S.

One participant on the government conference call today said the agencies offered few concrete details of how healthcare organizations might better protect themselves against this threat actor or purported malware campaign.

“They didn’t share any IoCs [indicators of compromise], so it’s just been ‘patch your systems and report anything suspicious’,” said a healthcare industry veteran who sat in on the discussion.

However, others on the call said IoCs may be of little help for hospitals that have already been infiltrated by the Ryuk gang. That’s because the malware infrastructure used by the Ryuk gang is often unique to each victim, including everything from the Microsoft Windows executable files that get dropped on the infected hosts to the so-called “command and control” servers used to transmit data between and among compromised systems.

Nevertheless, cybersecurity incident response firm Mandiant today released a list of domains and Internet addresses used by Ryuk in previous attacks throughout 2020 and up to the present day. Mandiant refers to the group by the threat actor classification “UNC1878,” and aired a webcast today detailing some of Ryuk’s latest exploitation tactics.

Charles Carmakal, senior vice president for Mandiant, told Reuters that UNC1878 is one of most brazen, heartless, and disruptive threat actors he’s observed over the course of his career.

“Multiple hospitals have already been significantly impacted by Ryuk ransomware and their networks have been taken offline,” Carmakal said.

One health industry veteran who participated in the call today and who spoke with KrebsOnSecurity on condition of anonymity said if there truly are hundreds of medical facilities at imminent risk here, that would seem to go beyond the scope of any one hospital group and may implicate some kind of electronic health record provider that integrates with many care facilities.

So far, however, nothing like hundreds of facilities have publicly reported ransomware incidents. But there have been a handful of hospitals dealing with ransomware attacks in the past few days.

–Becker’s Hospital Review reported today that a ransomware attack hit Klamath Falls, Ore.-based Sky Lakes Medical Center’s computer systems.

–WWNY’s Channel 7 News in New York reported yesterday that a Ryuk ransomware attack on St. Lawrence Health System led to computer infections at Caton-Potsdam, Messena and Gouverneur hospitals.

–SWNewsMedia.com on Monday reported on “unidentified network activity” that caused disruption to certain operations at Ridgeview Medical Center in Waconia, Minn. SWNews says Ridgeview’s system includes Chaska’s Two Twelve Medical Center, three hospitals, clinics and other emergency and long-term care sites around the metro area.

This is a developing story. Stay tuned for further updates.

In March 2020, KrebsOnSecurity alerted Swedish security giant Gunnebo Group that hackers had broken into its network and sold the access to a criminal group which specializes in deploying ransomware. In August, Gunnebo said it had successfully thwarted a ransomware attack, but this week it emerged that the intruders stole and published online tens of thousands of sensitive documents — including schematics of client bank vaults and surveillance systems.

The Gunnebo Group is a Swedish multinational company that provides physical security to a variety of customers globally, including banks, government agencies, airports, casinos, jewelry stores, tax agencies and even nuclear power plants. The company has operations in 25 countries, more than 4,000 employees, and billions in revenue annually.

Acting on a tip from Milwaukee, Wis.-based cyber intelligence firm Hold Security, KrebsOnSecurity in March told Gunnebo about a financial transaction between a malicious hacker and a cybercriminal group which specializes in deploying ransomware. That transaction included credentials to a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) account apparently set up by a Gunnebo Group employee who wished to access the company’s internal network remotely.

Five months later, Gunnebo disclosed it had suffered a cyber attack targeting its IT systems that forced the shutdown of internal servers. Nevertheless, the company said its quick reaction prevented the intruders from spreading the ransomware throughout its systems, and that the overall lasting impact from the incident was minimal.

Earlier this week, Swedish news agency Dagens Nyheter confirmed that hackers recently published online at least 38,000 documents stolen from Gunnebo’s network. Linus Larsson, the journalist who broke the story, says the hacked material was uploaded to a public server during the second half of September, and it is not known how many people may have gained access to it.

Larsson quotes Gunnebo CEO Stefan Syrén saying the company never considered paying the ransom the attackers demanded in exchange for not publishing its internal documents. What’s more, Syrén seemed to downplay the severity of the exposure.

“I understand that you can see drawings as sensitive, but we do not consider them as sensitive automatically,” the CEO reportedly said. “When it comes to cameras in a public environment, for example, half the point is that they should be visible, therefore a drawing with camera placements in itself is not very sensitive.”

It remains unclear whether the stolen RDP credentials were a factor in this incident. But the password to the Gunnebo RDP account — “password01” — suggests the security of its IT systems may have been lacking in other areas as well.

After this author posted a request for contact from Gunnebo on Twitter, KrebsOnSecurity heard from Rasmus Jansson, an account manager at Gunnebo who specializes in protecting client systems from electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks or disruption, short bursts of energy that can damage electrical equipment.

Jansson said he relayed the stolen credentials to the company’s IT specialists, but that he does not know what actions the company took in response. Reached by phone today, Jansson said he quit the company in August, right around the time Gunnebo disclosed the thwarted ransomware attack. He declined to comment on the particulars of the extortion incident.

Ransomware attackers often spend weeks or months inside of a target’s network before attempting to deploy malware across the network that encrypts servers and desktop systems unless and until a ransom demand is met.

That’s because gaining the initial foothold is rarely the difficult part of the attack. In fact, many ransomware groups now have such an embarrassment of riches in this regard that they’ve taken to hiring external penetration testers to carry out the grunt work of escalating that initial foothold into complete control over the victim’s network and any data backup systems  — a process that can be hugely time consuming.

But prior to launching their ransomware, it has become common practice for these extortionists to offload as much sensitive and proprietary data as possible. In some cases, this allows the intruders to profit even if their malware somehow fails to do its job. In other instances, victims are asked to pay two extortion demands: One for a digital key to unlock encrypted systems, and another in exchange for a promise not to publish, auction or otherwise trade any stolen data.

While it may seem ironic when a physical security firm ends up having all of its secrets published online, the reality is that some of the biggest targets of ransomware groups continue to be companies which may not consider cybersecurity or information systems as their primary concern or business — regardless of how much may be riding on that technology.

Indeed, companies that persist in viewing cyber and physical security as somehow separate seem to be among the favorite targets of ransomware actors. Last week, a Russian journalist published a video on Youtube claiming to be an interview with the cybercriminals behind the REvil/Sodinokibi ransomware strain, which is the handiwork of a particularly aggressive criminal group that’s been behind some of the biggest and most costly ransom attacks in recent years.

In the video, the REvil representative stated that the most desirable targets for the group were agriculture companies, manufacturers, insurance firms, and law firms. The REvil actor claimed that on average roughly one in three of its victims agrees to pay an extortion fee.

Mark Arena, CEO of cybersecurity threat intelligence firm Intel 471, said while it might be tempting to believe that firms which specialize in information security typically have better cybersecurity practices than physical security firms, few organizations have a deep understanding of their adversaries.

Arena said this is a particularly acute shortcoming with many managed service providers (MSPs), companies that provide outsourced security services to hundreds or thousands of clients who might not otherwise be able to afford to hire cybersecurity professionals.

“The harsh and unfortunate reality is the security of a number of security companies is shit,” Arena said. “Most companies tend to have a lack of ongoing and up to date understanding of the threat actors they face.”

For the second time in as many years, Google is working to fix a weakness in its Widevine digital rights management (DRM) technology used by online streaming sites like Disney, Hulu and Netflix to prevent their content from being pirated.

The latest cracks in Widevine concern the encryption technology’s protection for L3 streams, which is used for low-quality video and audio streams only. Google says the weakness does not affect L1 and L2 streams, which encompass more high-definition video and audio content.

“As code protection is always evolving to address new threats, we are currently working to update our Widevine software DRM with the latest advancements in code protection to address this issue,” Google said in a written statement provided to KrebsOnSecurity.

In January 2019, researcher David Buchanan tweeted about the L3 weakness he found, but didn’t release any proof-of-concept code that others could use to exploit it before Google fixed the problem.

This latest Widevine hack, however, has been made into an extension for Microsoft Windows users of the Google Chrome web browser and posted for download on the software development platform Github.

Tomer Hadad, the researcher who developed the browser extension, said his proof-of-concept code “was done to further show that code obfuscation, anti-debugging tricks, whitebox cryptography algorithms and other methods of security-by-obscurity will eventually by defeated anyway, and are, in a way, pointless.”

Google called the weakness a bug that would be fixed. But Hadad took issue with that characterization.

“It’s not a bug but an inevitable flaw because of the use of software, which is also why L3 does not offer the best quality,” Hadad wrote in an email. “L3 is usually used on desktops because of the lack of hardware trusted zones.”

Media companies that stream video online using Widevine can select different levels of protection for delivering their content, depending on the capabilities of the device requesting access. Most modern smartphones and mobile devices support much more robust L1 and L2 Widevine protections that do not rely on L3.

Further reading: Breaking Content Protection on Streaming Websites