We all know that cyber-criminal gangs spreading file encrypting malware are nowadays first stealing data and then encrypting it until a ransom is paid. And if a victim denies paying a ransom or doesn’t entertain their demands, they simply sell that stolen data on the dark web to make money. And if the victim pays them a ransom in cryptocurrency, they send fake screenshots that their data is being or was deleted from their database. But in reality, they still posses a copy of that siphoned information and will store it safe to use it in near future.
Nowadays, ransomware spreading gangs have indulged in a new business of preying on victims who have or willing to pay for their data deletion. This threat is growing with the time, as criminals involved in the business are urging victims to pay to gain a decryption key. And pay more to get the data removed from the leak site. And finally, pay even more to get the leaked data deleted from their servers cleaned up from their servers, forever.
It’s a kind of extortion that seems to go as a never-ending saga, eventually leading to a salvage of a business reputation for sure.
Thus, the only way to deal with this situation is to keep your database proactively protected with such troubles. And if in case the data gets leaked, better to recover it from a backup plan, instead of paying the criminals a ransom and then repenting there afterwards.
In the year 2019, the FBI released an official statement discouraging ransomware victims from paying anything to the hackers. Because, first, the pay doesn’t guarantee a decryption key and second thing is that it acts as an entry point for criminals to demand more and repeat their malware attacks on the infrastructure 2-3 times or till the victim secures the database from all future related attacks.
What’s your say?
