Ransomware Pay Hit Record $1.1B in 2023, Hackers Hunted ‘Big Game’

2023 was “a watershed year” for ransomware attacks, and I in which ransom money payments almost doubled to a record book $1.1 billion high. That’s according to a young written report from Chainanalysis.

The New York-based blockchain analytic thinking unbendable noted that hackers are increasingly deploying a “big gritty hunting” strategy. That way sledding after world-wide corporations, such as British people Airways, and cassino giants the likes of MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment, inward seek of larger payloads.

Ransomware payment volume progressively involved payments of $1 one thousand thousand or more, the report stated. Hospitals, schools, and government agencies were also oftentimes targeted.

“2023 marks a major comeback for ransomware, with record-breaking payments and a substantial increase in the compass and complexity of attacks — a significant turn around from the wane observed inwards 2022,” Chainanalysis researchers wrote.

Prime Target

The gambling manufacture has long been a target for ransomware attacks. But until the lowest decade, online gaming sites make been the to the highest degree unwashed target for hackers. Sports betting and stove poker platforms are prime targets, because cybercriminals can buoy easily gauge summit business organization hours, such as during a major sporting case or a flagship salamander tournament series.

The criminals tin can and so striking them with a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS), which temporarily paralyzes a website with thousands of meaningless requests for information. Often, it’s cheaper for the gaming situation to simply make up the redeem and make a motion on.

But land-based cassino operators are now progressively targeted, and that includes the biggest players inwards the industry.

Scattered Spider

In Sep 2023, a hacking group known multifariously as “Scattered Spider” or “Octo Tempest” launched devastating ransomware attacks on MGM and Caesars.

MGM refused to compensate the redeem and experient disruption to its operations that lasted for days and caused an estimated $100 zillion inwards damage. Caesars paid the hackers around $15 trillion to make normal services restored, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Scattered Spider is an formless chemical group of hackers that engages inward various crimes, from ransomware to sextortion and phone scams. But the grouping has late turned to “big gamey hunting.”

Scattered Spider is notable because its members are mainly English-speaking. High-profile cybercrime has traditionally been the land of East European malefactor gangs or state-sponsored hackers backed past China, Iran, or Frederick North Korea. This shows how threats are diversifying.

FBI Takedown

But the account also praises the get on made past natural law enforcement inward combating ransomware attacks. This included the FBI’s infiltration of the radical known as “Hive” inward 2022, which the news report suggests contributed to a important simplification inwards attacks that year.

The federal bureau was able-bodied to provide decryption keys to more than 1,300 of Hive’s victims, essentially preventing the need for redeem payments. This intervention prevented more or less $130 gazillion inward ransomware payments inwards 2022.

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