In just the past month, major companies have made multimillion-dollar payments to ransomware hackers to get their systems back online. But even so, the FBI still discourages ransomware victims from paying up.
"It is our policy, it is our guidance, from the FBI, that companies should not pay the ransom for a number of reasons," FBI director Christopher Wray testified Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee.
For one thing, the FBI believes paying these ransoms only encourages more cyber attacks. For another thing, companies or governments that pay millions to hackers still might not get their data back, "and that's not unknown to happen," Wray said.
Ransomware is one of the biggest cyber security threats facing businesses today. It's a type of malware that attackers can use to lock a device or encrypt its contents so they can extort money from the owner or operator.
Given its potential to deliver a high return on investment and the relative ease at which it can spread, this type of attack has become extremely popular among cyber criminals.
Just recently, two major ransomware cases have illustrated the dangers:
On Wednesday, JBS Foods, the world's largest meat processor, confirmed it paid an $11 million ransom to hackers who compromised its IT systems late last month. The company, which produces close to a quarter of the US' beef, fell victim to a ransomware attack on May 30. The firm was forced to suspend all affected systems and, in some areas, shut down production for 24 hours.
Last month, Colonial Pipeline, which transports nearly half the fuel consumed on the East Coast, confirmed the company paid $4.4 million to cyber criminals who launched a ransomware attack against it earlier in the month.
The Department of Justice ended up recovering $2.3 million of that ransomware payment by tracking Bitcoin transfers.
FBI Director Wray told Congress on Thursday that, in addition to helping companies that way, the FBI has sometimes obtained hackers' encryption keys and unlocked the seized data without paying a dime.
RELATED RESOURCE
Defend your organisation from evolving ransomware attacks
Learn what it takes to reduce risk and strengthen operational resiliency
"There are a whole bunch of things we can do to prevent this activity from occurring, whether they pay the ransom or not, if they communicate and coordinate and work closely with law enforcement right out of the gate," he said. "That's I think the most important part."
Last week, the Justice Department announced it was elevating ransomware investigations to a similar status as terrorism. Internal guidance sent to US attorney's offices across the country said ransomware investigations in the field should be centrally coordinated with a new task force in Washington, DC.
-
Should workers prepare to become AI agent bosses?In-depth Tech leaders claim employees could soon be managing AI agents – but this will require a huge culture shift, security awareness and governance
-
Microsoft and Cloudflare just took down a major phishing operationNews RaccoonO365’s phishing as a service platform has risen to prominence via Telegram
-
Cyber professionals are losing sleep over late night attacksNews Hackers are biding their time and launching attacks when businesses can’t respond
-
Prolific ransomware operator added to Europe’s Most Wanted list as US dangles $10 million rewardNews The US Department of Justice is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest of Volodymyr Viktorovych Tymoshchuk, an alleged ransomware criminal.
-
Jaguar Land Rover “did the right thing” shutting down systems to thwart cyber attackNews The attack on Jaguar Land Rover highlights the growing attractiveness of the automotive sector
-
Ransomware attack on IT supplier disrupts hundreds of Swedish municipalitiesNews The attack on IT systems supplier Miljödata has impacted public sector services across the country
-
A notorious hacker group is ramping up cloud-based ransomware attacksNews The Storm-0501 threat group is refining its tactics, according to Microsoft, shifting away from traditional endpoint-based attacks and toward cloud-based ransomware.
-
Security researchers have just identified what could be the first ‘AI-powered’ ransomware strain – and it uses OpenAI’s gpt-oss-20b modelNews Using OpenAI's gpt-oss:20b model, ‘PromptLock’ generates malicious Lua scripts via the Ollama API.
-
Data I/O shuts down systems in wake of ransomware attack
News Regulatory filings by Data I/O suggest the costs of dealing with the attack could be significant
-
Average ransom payment doubles in a single quarterNews Targeted social engineering and data exfiltration have become the biggest tactics as three major ransomware groups dominate
