Monsters Inc, Stingless Bees, and BlackFog makes the threats clear. This Week in Ransomware – Sunday December 4, 2022 | IT World Canada News

We know that monsters aren’t actual, however they’re nonetheless a menace

Software firm ESET has detected a brand new ransomware variant named RansomBoggs in organizations in Ukraine.

The ransom observe that accompanies the assault claims to be written by James P. Sullivan, the primary character within the film Monsters Inc. Other references to the film are additionally reported to be within the code.

ESET factors out that this new variant shares many similarities with earlier assaults by a gaggle referred to as Sandworm. It makes use of a PowerShell script to distribute .NET ransomware.

Sandworm is reportedly a gaggle of elite state-sponsored Russian hackers, energetic for many years, with a status for attacking infrastructure and management programs.

Security weblog Bleeping Computer said that they’re “believed to be part of Unit 74455 of the Russian GRU’s Main Center for Special Technologies.”

The group has been linked to earlier assaults on Ukraine infrastructure with the KillDisk wiper in addition to the NotPetya ransomware. The U.S. Department of Justice charged six members of the group for actions associated to the NotPetya ransomware assault, in addition to assaults on the 2018 Winter Games and the 2017 elections in France.

It additionally doesn’t float like a butterfly

A brand new ransomware group has emerged which has been named Trigona, after a household of stingless bees. The group has adopted a logo which options an individual in a cyber bee costume.

While the group has been energetic for a while, it has not too long ago launched a brand new Tor web site the place it accepts Monero for ransom funds. Monero payments itself as a safe, non-public and untraceable forex.

Lawrence Abrams from safety weblog Bleeping Computer has completed some deeper evaluation on Trigona.

BlackFog points an inventory of ransomware assaults with quite a lot of Canadian assaults

Security agency BlackFog issued its State of Ransomware in 2022 report, with a month-by-month evaluation of a few of the main assaults from the previous 12 months. The checklist is drawn from assaults all over the world, and is a slightly miserable 12 months in evaluation. A lot of outstanding Canadian organizations made the checklist, together with Sobeys, the Ontario Secondary School Teacher’s Federation, the Montreal Tourism Agency, Bell Technical Services, the John Diefenbaker International Airport, and extra.

The checklist is price , if solely to realize a transparent image of the sheer vary of organizations which were affected by ransomware. Statistics and mapping are one technique to view the issue, however going month by month by means of the lists of corporations brings the issue into beautiful readability.