Threat intelligence firm Mandiant released findings about a new Russian based hacking group dubbed FIN12, which is targeting the health care industry and companies with revenue over $300 million. Mandiant said that FIN12 is “very aggressive and brazen in who they target.”
According to Mandiant, FIN12 uses different hacking techniques and tools to infiltrate targets, stays in the company’s system for only two days, does not exfiltrate data or use double extortion techniques, and uses Ryuk malware. FIN12 is financially motivated and targets companies who have critical systems that can’t be down for long periods of time and are relying on companies to pay quickly to get their system back up quickly, almost as a cost of doing business.
This is an unfortunate reality that many companies are facing: pay to get back up and running and resume business operations, or fight the hackers and maybe lose more money than the price of the ransom? With these business decisions, it is understandable why combatting ransomware attacks is so difficult when you are right in the middle of one.