The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says that in 2021 ransomware gangs breached the networks of at least 649 organizations from multiple critical infrastructure sectors in the US, according to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) 2021 Internet Crime Report.
However, the actual number is likely higher given that the FBI began tracking reported ransomware incidents in which the victim was a critical infrastructure sector organization in June 2021.
Also, apparently the FBI statistics do not include victims who did not file a complaint with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).
"IC3 received 649 complaints indicating that organizations in a critical infrastructure sector were victims of a ransomware attack," the FBI said.
Over the past year, the FBI has issued multiple advisories, Private Industry Notifications (PINs), and flash alerts for ransomware groups targeting critical infrastructure, including U.S. water and sanitation systems ,the Food and Agriculture Organization, U.S. Healthcare and First Responder networks, and educational institutions.
Since December, the FBI has revealed that the Ragnar Locker ransomware gang compromised the networks of at least 52 critical organizations, the Cuba ransomware compromised at least 49 critical US infrastructure entities, while the BlackByte ransomware gang affected at least three more.
Top gangs behind attacks on US critical infrastructure
The top three ransomware gangs that breached critical infrastructure organization networks, based on the number of attacks, were CONTI (with 87 victims), LockBit (with 58), and REvil/Sodinokibi (with 51).
The FBI said it does not encourage paying ransoms, as victims have no guarantee that this will prevent future attacks or leaks of stolen data.
On the contrary, paying ransom will further motivate ransomware gangs to target even more victims and motivate other cybercrime groups to join in and launch ransomware attacks.
As part of the IC3 Cybercrime Report for 2021, the FBI added that it “expects an increase in attacks on critical infrastructure in 2022.”.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
