NEW YORK—A ransomware scheme has emerged that takes a new approach, according to a new report.
“The Royal ransomware group—another offshoot of the disbanded Conti group—appears to have targeted more than 1,000 organizations with a social engineering attack designed to trick victims into trusting the attackers, said researchers at threat intelligence firm Red Sense,” Bank Info Security reported.
The firm last month identified a spam campaign that appears to trace to Royal and that layers on the deception, first by falsely notifying victims that they've been attacked by a ransomware group and then by pressuring them into opening a file that purportedly lists what was stolen but is really a malware loader, Bank Info Security explained.
A Fake Midnight?
The scheme may have even concocted a fake version of a Midnight Group attack, Yelisey Bohuslavskiy, Red Sense's chief research officer, was quoted in the report as saying.
"Victims of this fraud campaign receive emails claiming the Midnight Group was behind the original ransomware attack, and their data will be posted on the dark web if they do not pay," Arete reported, noting that Midnight Group first began operating in 2019.
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