Backup appliance maker Exagrid pays $2.6m to Conti Ransomware hackers

Despite repeated warnings by the law enforcement agencies like the FBI against ransomware payments, Backup appliance maker Exagrid has reportedly paid $2.6m in Bitcoins to those spreading Conti Ransomware.

Going deep into the details, the firm that is into the business of data storage was hit by the Conti Ransomware group in May this year and sources report that the cyber crooks managed to steal data around 800GB of data related to employees, customers, confidential info and source code of few of the products- only to indulge in double extortion tactics at a later stage.

After reviewing the situation, the IT staff of the firm had no other choice left rather than to pay 50.75 BTC to the hackers on May 13th, 2021 as some critical data belonging to the company was accessed by hackers who later threatened to sell that data on the dark web if in case, the victimized company i.e. Exagrid failed to pay to their demands.

It was embarrassing for the backup appliance maker to bow down to the demands of the hackers. But as it did had no other choice, its staff made the ransom payment for the return of the decryption tool that was accidentally deleted by one of the staff members on an initial note.

Later on the persuasion of a senior member from the management team, the hackers re-returned the decryption key.

All this matter was published as a fact in LeMagIT, a French subsidiary of Computer Weekly that also claims to have access to all the negotiation-filled conversations made between the firm Exagrid and those spreading Conti Ransomware.

Note- The highlight of this story is that the victim company launched a ransomware restoration solution in December 2020 and to their embarrassment, their solution did not work for their business problem.