Russia missing from US-organized international ransomware event
US officials blame absence on host of reasons
This week, the US is organizing an international summit where participants will discuss countering the online ransomware threat. Russia is notably absent from the list of attendees.
The meeting, organized by the National Security Council, will bring over 30 partners together to discuss how to counter the ransomware threat. Participants range from Australia, Canada, the EU, the United Kingdom to Estonia, Nigeria, and Bulgaria.
The virtual summit will address four topics: How to disrupt ransomware actors and infrastructure, how to improve network resilience to attacks, how to change the financial systems that support ransomware, and how to increase international cooperation to fight this growing crime model.
Four key partners will lead the event: India will lead and organize discussions around resilience; Australia will lead the session on disruption; the UK will discuss the issue of virtual currency; and Germany will focus on diplomacy.
That focus on international diplomacy is notable, given Russia's absence from the event. President Biden discussed ransomware at a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June, warning him that he would not tolerate cyber attacks on US infrastructure from Russia.
A senior administration official said that Russia was not participating for a range of reasons.
RELATED RESOURCE
The best defence against ransomware
How ransomware is evolving and how to defend against it
"We’ve seen some steps by the Russian government and are looking to see follow-up actions. And broader international cooperation is an important line of effort because these are transnational criminal organizations and they leverage global infrastructure money laundering networks to carry out their attacks," they said. The US also communicates directly with Russia on ransomware issues via a US-Kremlin Experts Group, they added.
Ransomware payouts have nearly doubled in the last year. The US has suffered several high-profile attacks, including a successful assault on Colonial Pipeline that prompted authorities to order better security on US pipelines.
-
The OpenAI and Anthropic containment breaches are a bit spooky, but also quite sillyOpinion An AI leaving notes to future versions of itself is pure sci-fi; forgetting to lock down an environment is prosaic
-
Bringing data to the heart of AISponsored AI is changing our approach to data, find out how HPE Alletra Storage can help your business
-
Companies are still paying ransoms to cyber criminals despite official adviceNews A Proofpoint survey found evolving ransomware techniques and the use of AI is exacerbating the situation for victims
-
This one cyber crime group accounted for nearly a fifth of all ransomware attacks in JuneNews The Gentlemen, a ransomware a service operator, now accounts for 17% of published attacks
-
Working with the enemy: Ransomware negotiator-turned cyber criminal jailed after working with hackers to extort clientsNews Angelo Martino was supposed to be negotiating on behalf of victims, but was secretly working for ransomware operators
-
Hackers are posing as Interpol to target small businesses – here's what you need to knowNews Small businesses are warned to think twice before clicking on links
-
‘Every hour ransomware goes undetected drastically increases its potential blast radius’: Hackers are breaching networks and laying low for longer – and nearly half of firms don’t realize until data is stolenNews An ExtraHop survey found more intrusions are going undetected, leading to longer dwell times
-
Ransomware cartels are fragmenting into volatile splinter groups, warns Met Police cyber chiefNews Commoditized "cyber crime bazaars" and AI data mining are forcing law enforcement to rewrite its playbook
-
New ransomware threat group, The Gentlemen, has become one of the most active ransomware operators, accounting for 10% of all attacksNews NTT researchers warn that the RaaS group is leveraging SystemBC malware to establish covert tunnelling, evade detection, and support rapid lateral movement across enterprise environments
-
Instructure chose to a pay ransom following the Canvas cyber attack – research shows more than half of security leaders would follow suitAnalysis Opting to pay ransoms creates huge risks for enterprises – you’re relying on the word of criminals
