Detailed research carried out by the FBI over 100 ransomware variants has given a clear picture of who is/was behind the attacks.
Christopher Wray, the Director of FBI disclosed this news to Wall Street Journal(WSJ) on Friday and stated that many of them were traced back to Russian soil.
The Putin-led nation is behind most of the file-encrypting malware attacks and there is enough evidence that they were launched from the said nation targeting West said Mr. Wray, in an exclusive interview with WSJ.
Christopher confirmed that the United States’ critical infrastructure and private entities were hit by over 100 ransomware variants in the last couple of years and the latest victim was JBS Meat that disrupted the company supply operations across United States, Canada, and Australia.
Yesterday, the White House issued an open letter to all companies operating in the United States that warned them against the surge in ransomware attacks. The Biden Administration is also planning to bring the issue to the notice of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit to be held in Geneva on June 16th of this year.
Dmitri Peskov, the spokesperson to Kremlin has confirmed the news and added that Russia is ever ready to help Biden nation in all aspects on this note.
Note 1- Unconfirmed reports say that JBS operations were disrupted by REvil aka Sodinokibi ransomware group. However, the good news is that the company is slowly recovering from the incident, and confirmed sources state that the operations in Canada and United States will be up by this weekend.
Note 2- In November 2019, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) urged all ransomware victims not to pay any ransom to the crime groups as it not only encourages crime but doesn’t guarantee that they will not attack the network in the future and will surely provide a decryption key to the victims.
