The U.S. authorities mentioned it’s extending its reward looking for data on key management of the ALPHV/BlackCat cybercrime gang to its affiliate members, considered one of which final month took credit score for an enormous ransomware assault on a U.S. well being tech big.
In an announcement Wednesday, the U.S. State Division mentioned it would offer a reward of up to $10 million for data that identifies or locates any individual related to ALPHV/BlackCat, together with “their associates, actions, or hyperlinks to a international authorities.”
The Russia-based ALPHV/BlackCat is a ransomware-as-a-service operation, which recruits associates — successfully contractors who earn a fee for launching ransomware assaults — and takes a lower of no matter ransom demand the sufferer pays. Though safety researchers haven’t but drawn a connection between ALPHV/BlackCat and a international authorities, the State Division implied in its assertion that the gang could also be “appearing on the route or beneath the management of a international authorities,” akin to Russia.
The State Division blamed the prolific ransomware group for concentrating on U.S. vital infrastructure, together with healthcare companies.
Final month, an affiliate group of the ALPHV/BlackCat gang took credit for a cyberattack and weeks-long outage at U.S. well being tech big Change Healthcare, which processes round one-in-three U.S. affected person medical data. The cyberattack knocked out much of the U.S. healthcare system’s access to patient records and billing information, inflicting huge outages and delays in fulfilling medicines and prescriptions and surgical authorizations for weeks.
The affiliate group went public after accusing the principle ALPHV/BlackCat gang of swindling the contract hackers out of $22 million in ransom that Change Healthcare allegedly paid to forestall the mass leak of affected person data.
The group mentioned ALPHV/BlackCat carried out an “exit rip-off,” the place the hackers run off with their fortune to keep away from paying their associates and hold the stolen funds for themselves.
Regardless of having misplaced their lower of the ransom demand, the affiliate group claimed to nonetheless have entry to an enormous quantity of stolen delicate affected person information.
Change Healthcare has mentioned since that it ejected the hackers from its community and restored a lot of its programs. U.S. medical insurance big UnitedHealth Group, the dad or mum firm of Change Healthcare, has not but confirmed if any affected person information was stolen.
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