A ransomware group referred to as Darkish Angels made headlines this previous week when it was revealed the crime group not too long ago obtained a document $75 million information ransom cost from a Fortune 50 firm. Safety specialists say the Darkish Angels have been round since 2021, however the group doesn’t get a lot press as a result of they work alone and keep a low profile, selecting one goal at a time and favoring mass information theft over disrupting the sufferer’s operations.
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Safety agency Zscaler ThreatLabz this month ranked Darkish Angels as the highest ransomware menace for 2024, noting that in early 2024 a sufferer paid the ransomware group $75 million — increased than any beforehand recorded ransom cost. ThreatLabz discovered Darkish Angels has carried out among the largest ransomware assaults thus far, and but little is thought concerning the group.
Brett Stone-Gross, senior director of menace intelligence at ThreatLabz, stated Darkish Angels function utilizing a wholly completely different playbook than most different ransomware teams. For starters, he stated, Darkish Angels doesn’t make use of the everyday ransomware affiliate mannequin, which depends on hackers-for-hire to put in malicious software program that locks up contaminated methods.
“They actually don’t wish to be within the headlines or trigger enterprise disruptions,” Stone-Gross stated. “They’re about earning money and attracting as little consideration as doable.”
Most ransomware teams keep flashy sufferer leak websites which threaten to publish the goal’s stolen information except a ransom demand is paid. However the Darkish Angels didn’t actually have a sufferer shaming website till April 2023. And the leak website isn’t significantly properly branded; it’s referred to as Dunghill Leak.
The Darkish Angels sufferer shaming website, Dunghill Leak.
“Nothing about them is flashy,” Stone-Gross stated. “For the longest time, they didn’t even wish to trigger a giant headline, however they in all probability felt compelled to create that leaks website as a result of they needed to point out they had been severe and that they had been going to put up sufferer information and make it accessible.”
Darkish Angels is regarded as a Russia-based cybercrime syndicate whose distinguishing attribute is stealing really staggering quantities of information from main corporations throughout a number of sectors, together with healthcare, finance, authorities and training. For big companies, the group has exfiltrated between 10-100 terabytes of information, which might take days or even weeks to switch, ThreatLabz discovered.
Like most ransom gangs, Darkish Angels will publish information stolen from victims who don’t pay. A number of the extra notable victims listed on Dunghill Leak embrace the worldwide meals distribution agency Sysco, which disclosed a ransomware assault in Might 2023; and the journey reserving large Sabre, which was hit by the Darkish Angels in September 2023.
Stone-Gross stated Darkish Angels is usually reluctant to deploy ransomware malware as a result of such assaults work by locking up the goal’s IT infrastructure, which generally causes the sufferer’s enterprise to grind to a halt for days, weeks and even months on finish. And people forms of breaches are likely to make headlines rapidly.
“They selectively select whether or not they wish to deploy ransomware or not,” he stated. “In the event that they deem they will encrypt some information that gained’t trigger main disruptions — however will give them a ton of information — that’s what they’ll do. However actually, what separates them from the remaining is the quantity of information they’re stealing. It’s a complete order of magnitude higher with Darkish Angels. Firms dropping huge quantities of information can pay these excessive ransoms.”
So who paid the document $75 million ransom? Bleeping Laptop posited on July 30 that the sufferer was the pharmaceutical large Cencora (previously AmeriSourceBergen Company), which reported an information safety incident to the U.S. Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) on February 21, 2024.
The SEC requires publicly-traded corporations to reveal a probably materials cybersecurity occasion inside 4 days of the incident. Cencora is at present #10 on the Fortune 500 listing, producing greater than $262 billion in income final yr.
Cencora didn’t reply to questions on whether or not it had made a ransom cost in reference to the February cybersecurity incident, and referred KrebsOnSecurity to bills listed underneath “Different” within the restructuring part of their newest quarterly monetary report (PDF). That report states that almost all of the $30 million price in “Different” was related to the breach.
Cencora’s quarterly assertion stated the incident affected a standalone legacy data know-how platform in a single nation and the overseas enterprise unit’s means to function in that nation for about two weeks.
Cencora’s 2024 1st quarter report paperwork a $30 million price related to an information exfiltration occasion in mid-February 2024.
In its most up-to-date State of Ransomware report (PDF), safety agency Sophos discovered the typical ransomware cost had elevated fivefold prior to now yr, from $400,000 in 2023 to $2 million. Sophos says that in additional than four-fifths (82%) of instances funding for the ransom got here from a number of sources. General, 40% of whole ransom funding got here from the organizations themselves and 23% from insurance coverage suppliers.
Additional studying: ThreatLabz ransomware report (PDF).