The lengthy amount of time that criminal hackers are sitting undetected on the networks of U.S. businesses is giving them powerful leverage to extort their victims, according to a Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity official. Going unnoticed on corporate networks allows ransomware gangs to size up their victims and funnel out data before ransom negotiations even begin, said Matt Travis, deputy director of DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “They’re not just going into networks and seizing data,” Travis said Wednesday at IBM’s Think Gov Digital event, produced by FedScoop. “They’re snooping around” for balance sheets and other financial data to “gain intelligence on how much of a ransom they think they can get.” In the last three months, the criminal hackers behind the Maze ransomware have attacked two big IT service providers, one of which is a Fortune 500 company. Other ransomware gangs have hit big corporate targets, and […]
The post Ransomware gangs are doing their homework before encrypting corporate data appeared first on CyberScoop.
Continue reading Ransomware gangs are doing their homework before encrypting corporate data→