If you pay a hacker’s ransom, chances are that they’ll come back for more

Governments person agelong warned not to wage a hacker’s ransom demands, arguing that doing truthful lone lets criminals nett from their cyberattacks and funds the adjacent one. There’s besides different reason: The hackers are improbable to permission you unsocial if you wage up once, and galore volition travel backmost demanding more.

In a study published Wednesday, cybersecurity elephantine Proofpoint said it surveyed 953 companies and found that implicit one-third of companies that paid a hacker’s ransom were deed with a 2nd extortion demand. The findings underscore the long-held knowing among information researchers and web defenders that it’s intolerable to negociate successful good-faith with an extortion racket due to the fact that there’s nary inducement for the different broadside to really locomotion away.

Proofpoint’s information shows that ransomware attacks and extortion attacks person evolved from a azygous transaction wherever hackers would get paid erstwhile and determination on, into an effort utilizing aggregate forms of leverage, specified arsenic retaining stolen information nether the menace of publically releasing it.

While hackers person claimed successful the past that they volition delete oregon destruct the victim’s stolen data, past incidents person shown that not to beryllium the case.

Last month, a hack astatine marketplace probe steadfast Klue exposed data belonging to its customers, including respective cybersecurity firms. The institution said it struck a woody with the hackers, who claimed to person deleted the data, but the institution aboriginal conceded that a abstracted hacking radical swiped a illustration of the company’s stolen data, leaving its customers exposed to potential aboriginal extortion demands.

A akin concern befell Change Healthcare successful 2024, aft a Russian-speaking ransomware pack stole the wellness and aesculapian information of the bulk of radical successful America, immoderate 192 cardinal people. Amid a quality betwixt the hackers and their affiliates (criminal groups often subcontract out attacks), Change Healthcare paid abstracted ransoms to some groups of criminals to support the delicate aesculapian information disconnected of the internet.

Security researchers person agelong suspected that ransomware gangs and extortion rackets volition support clasp of the victim’s stolen data, adjacent aft a outgo is made. U.K. instrumentality enforcement confirmed this during their takedown efforts targeting the prolific LockBit ransomware pack successful 2024. Police said that they recovered victims’ stolen information stored connected LockBit’s servers agelong aft they had paid the ransom.