In a coordinated, multi-part offensive against NetWalker ransomware attackers, law enforcement agencies announced Wednesday that they charged a Canadian national, seized nearly half a million dollars in cryptocurrency and disabled a dark web leak site. The NetWalker attackers have been part of a growing ransomware trend where the hackers hold stolen data hostage, leak a sample of it and threaten to release the rest in order to incentivize victims into paying. They’ve been gone after everyone from government agencies to hospitals to schools, and haven’t shied from exploiting the COVID-19 crisis. They’ve also sought to expand profits by offering their ransomware as a service to other cybercriminals, leading to reports of booming revenue in 2020. The number of overall ransomware attacks increased by 311% in 2020, according to recent research by Chainalysis, a cryptocurrency tracking firm. The charges against Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins, as well as the seizure of approximately $454,530.19 in […]
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