The Babuk ransomware gang that hacked the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department leaked the profiles of 22 police officers on May 11in a blackmail attempt. The files on current and former officers are detailed and include personal information such as Social Security numbers, dates of birth, psychological evaluation results, copies of driver’s licenses, fingerprints, polygraph test results, as well as residential, financial and marital histories.
The Metropolitan Police Department of Washington was breached for the first time in April. The Babuk ransomware gang quickly took responsibility, and later published the profiles of 5 officers, which it then deleted after starting negotiations with the department.
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However, these negotiations appear to have not gone well for the department. According to alleged correspondence with the department published by the hackers on May 11 , they demanded $4 million to not release any more stolen files. The department responded with an offer of $ 100,000 , saying that “its spending is closely monitored.” The hackers responded that the offer was “unacceptable.”
The hack of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department is completely different from the hack of Colonial Pipeline and was carried out by a different group – but in both cases it appears that the hackers are Russian-speaking. But both are part of a larger trend of ransomware attacks, in which increasingly organized cybercriminals, usually based in Russia or Eastern Europe, target American entities and demand money either to unlock their computers or to keep sensitive data from being leaked.
See also: The Babuk ransomware gang stops its "operation"!
It is worth noting that, this year alone, more than 100 cyberattacks have been confirmed against U.S. targets, including state and local governments, schools, financial institutions, healthcare organizations and construction, according to an analysis by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Ransomware cost victims an estimated $75 billion in 2020, according to an estimate by cybersecurity firm Emsisoft.
Among the recent cyberattacks targeting the US is the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which announced on May 8 that it had been hit by a ransomware attack that resulted in the disruption of some of its services. Another ransomware gang (REvil) hacked a major Apple supplier – Quanta– in April and leaked designs for Apple devices. Additionally, a Southern California hospital chain – Scripps Health – has been struggling to recover from a major ransomware attack since May 1.
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Philip Reiner, Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Security and Technology (think tank of San Francisco seeking solutions to major cybersecurity problems), said that while ransomware has been a problem for years, the gangs have recently realized how much money they can extract from certain American entities.
The Biden administration has not yet released any plan to address ransomware gangs, but is preparing an official strategy, the first of its kind, for an international plan on how to stop them, and an executive order to improve the cybersecurity of the federal government.
Katie Nickels, chief information officer at cybersecurity firm Red Canary, said recent ransomware attacks are finally getting enough attention for the US to begin a slow process of trying to stop them.
Source of information: nbcnews.com
