ransom – Cyber Law Watch

Proposed cyber ransom bans predicted to cause “catastrophic damage”

Apr 27 2023

By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Stephanie Mayhew and Dadar Ahmadi-Pirshahid

We saw last year how low hackers are willing to stoop to shame companies into paying ransoms, including leaking sensitive information aimed at embarrassing individuals affected by data breaches. As a result we also saw prominent calls for ransom payments to be ‘banned’, to reduce the financial incentives for hackers to target Australians’ personal information.

We are now hearing the flipside to that argument, with AGL Energy warning that a government-imposed ban on companies paying cyber ransoms to hackers could cause “catastrophic damage”.

Ransomware attack on the world’s largest meatpacking company JBS

Jun 09 2021

By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham and Jacqueline Patishman

Last week, a ransomware attack on the world’s largest meatpacking company caused a temporary shut-down of its operations in Australia and North America. The attack infiltrated the company’s quality assurance systems and ultimately prevented normal production.

Nov 02 2020

By Cameron Abbott, Keely O’Dowd and Max Evans

Back in February, we blogged about the large scale ransomware attack experienced by Toll Group.

IT News reports Toll is still “mopping up” the damage caused by these attacks. Since July, Toll has embarked on a year-long accelerated cyber resilience program incorporating teams in India and Australia which led to the appointment of former Telstra Asia Pacific CISO Berin Lautenbach as Toll’s global head of information security in August.

Sep 18 2020

By Cameron Abbott and Keely O’Dowd

News reports have surfaced that a woman in Germany has died due to a delay in receiving medical care. What is most concerning about this death is the circumstances in which the woman tragically passed away.

According to reports, the woman needed urgent medical treatment and the hospital she presented to, Duesseldorf University Hospital, was unable to admit her as it was dealing with a ransomware attack.

The hackers exploited a vulnerability in a widely used commercial add-on software. This attack caused a failure in the hospital’s IT systems resulting in it being unable to access data and diverting emergency patients elsewhere. The woman was redirected to a hospital approximately 30km away from Duesseldorf University Hospital, which led to a delay in the woman receiving treatment. Unfortunately the delay proved fatal and the women passed away before she could be treated.

Aug 04 2020

By Cameron Abbott and Max Evans

In these unprecedented times, where travel around the globe is primarily halted as nations get to grips with controlling the outbreak of COVID-19, many would think it couldn’t get any worse for travel companies. However, they would be wrong, as according to an article from ITNews, American travel management giant CWT has reportedly paid a whopping 414 bitcoin, equivalent to a value of 4.5 Million USD (approximately 6.3 Million AUD), to hackers who successfully exfiltrated over 2 terabytes of sensitive corporate files.

According to the Article, the successful hackers used a strain of ransomware referred to as “Ragnar Locker” which places computer files into a virtual prison through encryption and renders them unusable until the victim pays for the keys. Then in CWT had to negotiate in a public chat forum to pay for the release. It gives us a rare insight into the dialogue that followed. CWT negotiated the hackers down from their initial demand of 10 Million USD. According to the Report, whilst the hackers claimed to have stolen over 2 terabytes of files including financial reports, security documents and employees’ personal data, it was not clear whether any customer data was compromised.

Tag:ransom

Proposed cyber ransom bans predicted to cause “catastrophic damage”

Ransomware attack on the world’s largest meatpacking company JBS

Continuing to take its Toll: Toll Group still feeling impacts nine months after experiencing Ransomware Attack

First reported death connected to misfired ransomware attack on German hospital

Can It Get Any Worse? Travel Giant CWT pays $4.5 Million USD ransom to Hackers who Stole Corporate Files and Knocked 30,000 Computers Offline