The U.S. State Department's Rewards for Justice program has announced that it will offer a reward of up to $10 million for information linking the Clop ransomware attacks to a foreign government.
“ Do you have information linking the CL0P Ransomware gang or any other malicious actor targeting USto a foreign government? Send it to us. You could be eligible for a reward critical infrastructure ,” the Rewards for Justice account tweeted .
See also: Shell confirms it was affected by Clop ransomware attack
Rewards for Justice (RFJ) is a U.S. Department of State program that offers monetary rewards to people who provide information about threat and attacks that threaten U.S. national security.
Initially, the program was designed to collect information on terrorists targeting American interests, but it was later expanded to include information on cybercriminals. At times, information has been requested on the Conti ransomware gang, Russian Sandworm hackers, the REvil , and the Evil Corp group.
See also: Clop ransomware claims responsibility for MOVEit attacks
Attacks and data breaches on US federal agencies
The new RFJ reward is in response to data theft attacks by the Clop ransomware gang. The attacks have targeted companies around the world, exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in the MOVEit Transfer file transfer platform .
The gang's attacks began on May 27 during the US Memorial Day holiday. The gang claims to have stolen data from hundreds of companies.
Clop began blackmailing companies by listing their names on a breach and threatening to leak data if a ransom was not paid.
At the same time, CNN reported that some federal agencies, including the Department of Energy, were breached during these attacks. Data was likely stolen.
The Clop ransomware gang told BleepingComputer that all data stolen from governments was immediately deleted. They repeated these claims more recently, in a message on their Tor data , saying they are only financially motivated and not interested in politics.
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Although the attackers claim to delete any data stolen from governments, we cannot be sure that this is true.
Therefore, federal agencies must keep in mind that stolen data may be used by cybercriminals or may be acquired by foreign governments.
The Rewards for Justice program hopes to deter future attacks by luring individuals, including other hackers, to provide information about the Clop ransomware gang. Clop ransomware is a rapidly growing cybersecurity threat, and organizations must implement adequate cybersecurity measures and policies to protect their systems. Education, awareness, software updates, and backups are essential to effectively combat this threat.
Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com
