With the Maze cartel gone, ransomware remains a painful issue for organizations

The Maze ransomware cartel may have retired, but the ransomware problem is not going anywhere. The early retirement of the Maze operators didn’t surprise ransomware researchers. “There is a possibility that it’s not a shutdown but a rebranding,” senior malware analyst at Kaspersky told CyberNews.

Maze ransomware, which began operating last May, was probably the most prominent malware group that threatened businesses and large organizations.

This April, Cognizant was attacked by Maze ransomware. The company revealed that the cost of the attack could be up to $70 million. 

“We do anticipate the revenue and corresponding margin impact to be in the range of $50 million to $70 million for the quarter,” Cognizant CFO Karen McLoughlin said in the earnings call.
In August, Canon suffered a ransomware attack for which Maze claimed responsibility. Also, the operators of Maze ransomware have published tens of GB of internal data from the networks of LG and Xerox following two failed extortion attempts, ZDnet reported.

“What also makes Maze stand out, is the fact that it was probably the first group to create a data leak blog,” researchers at Kaspersky told CyberNews.

Last week, it was reported that the Maze cartel decided to retire early at the top of their game. This is not unprecedented. Last June, GrandCrab ransomware group retired after claiming to have earned $2 billion. That only illustrates that ransomware doesn’t cease to exist. It’s quite the opposite – cybercriminals innovate and find new ways to attack.

Full article on https://cybernews.com/security/with-the-maze-cartel-gone-ransomware-remains-a-painful-issue-for-organizations/

#maze #ransomware #cartel #mindyourdata #yokdata #blog