Cybersecurity firm Symantec blocked a ransomware attack by a group known for demanding payment in Bitcoin (BTC) targeting 30 U.S.-based companies and Fortune 500 companies.
The announcement released by the cybersecurity company claims that the Evil Group, the malware gang behind the attacks, targeted the companies’ IT infrastructures. Still, companies were alerted in time to avoid ransomware deployment. The group used the WastedLocker ransomware and managed to breach the security of the victims’ networks and unsuccessfully attempted to pave the way to organize the attacks.
Gang asks for million dollar payments
Cointelegraph recently reported a study by cybersecurity firm Fox-IT, a division of the NCC Group, warned of the return of Evil Group’s cybercriminal activities, after a brief period of silence.
The gang is known for asking its victims to pay ransom payments of millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. There are reports that the group had been asking for a combined total of $ 10 from an unknown number of American companies that were recently attacked.
The Symantec Targeted Attack Cloud Analytics team first detected the early stages of WastedLocker attacks by relying on advanced machine learning to detect activity patterns related to recent targeted attacks.
Evil Group attacked 31 companies in the blocked attack, one of the companies is a US-based subsidiary of an overseas multinational.
Most affected sector
Symantec did not identify the expected victims, but the cybersecurity company report said the manufacturing sector was the hardest hit, as the gang targeted five organizations related to that industry.
According to Symantec, if the attackers had not been interrupted, “successful attacks could have caused millions of damage, downtime and a possible ripple effect on supply chains.”
The Evil Group had previously halted its operations until January 2020 due to the indictment of suspected members, Igor Olegovich Turashev and Maksim Viktorovich Yakubets.
