Ransomware Attacks Becoming More Widespread, Destructive, Expensive

More ransomware attacks made news headlines this month, with the most notable being the Oslo, Norway-based aluminum manufacturing Norsk Hydro being shut down by ransomware.

The company manufactures aluminum products, manufacturing close to half a million tons each year, and is also a significant provider of hydroelectric power in the Nordic state.

The LockerGoga malware was used to disrupt operations at one of the largest global aluminum manufacturers. According to Techcruch, “Employees were told to ‘not connect any devices’ to the company’s network.”

Wired magazine offered this Guide to LockerGoga, the ransomware that is crippling industrial firms.

Here’s a quote from the Wired article: “Since the beginning of the year, LockerGoga has hit a series of industrial and manufacturing firms with apparently catastrophic consequences: After an initial infection at the French engineering consulting firm Altran, LockerGoga last week slammed Norwegian aluminum manufacturer Norsk Hydro, forcing some of the company’s aluminum plants to switch to manual operations. Two more manufacturing companies, Hexion and Momentive, have been hit by LockerGoga—in Momentive’s case leading to a “global IT outage,” according to a report Friday by Motherboard. And incident responders at security firm FireEye tell WIRED they’ve dealt with multiple LockerGoga attacks on other industrial and manufacturing targets they declined to name, which would put the total number of victims in that sector at five or more.”

The Cost of Ransomware

At the beginning of 2019, Digital Guardian chronicled the history of ransomware attacks in this article which does a good job of defining terms, describing the effects of ransomware, explaining how the fraud works, and projecting future trends, but also underestimates the costs of ransomware in my view.

Why?

Because the research lists that ransomware costs are under $2.4 million (US), but the cost already associated with (Read more...)