blackmail

U.S. banks flagged ransomware-related transactions adding up to more than $1 billion in 2021, the Treasury Department said, although risk experts said that barely scratches the surface of cybercrime’s true economic scale. Data released by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, this week showed the number and value of transactions that banks had flagged as related to ransomware in 2021 reached $1.2 billion, spread across 1,489 reports to regulators. In 2020, such…

One of the largest hospital operators in the U.S. is wrestling with downed systems and disruptions to patient care at hospitals in several states following a ransomware attack last week.CommonSpirit Health, which operates over 140 hospitals and 2,000 other healthcare sites across 21 states, said in an update posted to its website Wednesday that it shut down electronic health records and other systems after it detected a ransomware attack disclosed on Oct. 4. The intrusion has had minimal impact on Dignity Health, part of…

Optus customers reported receiving text messages blackmailing them.Photo: Mark Baker (AP)Authorities in Australia arrested a 19-year-old who allegedly tried to blackmail customers of telecommunications company Optus following a data breach last month that impacted thousandsof people. The teenage hacker allegedly sent out text messages to 93 Optus customers to demand that $2,000 be deposited in a bank account, and threatened to sell and use their information for fraudulent activity if they don’t comply, The Guardian…

A Russian national who was extradited from the Netherlands to Portland, Ore., this week pleaded not guilty to charges of allegedly laundering cryptocurrency proceeds from ransomware attacks in the U.S. and abroad, the Justice Department said. Denis Dubnikov, a 29-year-old Russian, was arraigned in federal court for the District of Oregon on Wednesday. Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Dubnikov and his co-conspirators laundered bitcoin extracted from victims of…

The nearly nonstop series of new U.S. sanctions being levied in a bid to halt Russia’s war machine have complicated events for companies facing their own external threat: ransomware attacks.The ever-lengthening lists of sanctioned entities pose risks to U.S. companies that want to pay to get their systems back online after an attack, experts said. Ed McNicholas, co-leader of the cybersecurity practice at law firm Ropes & Gray LLP, said ensuring that ransomware payments aren’t going to…