South Korean Web Hosting Provider Pays $1 Million In Ransomware Demand (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Nayana, a web hosting provider based in South Korea, announced it is in the process of paying a three-tier ransom demand of nearly $1 million worth of Bitcoin, following a ransomware infection that encrypted data on customer' servers. The ransomware infection appears has taken place on June 10, but Nayana admitted to the incident two days later, in a statement on its website.
Attackers asked for an initial ransom payment of 550 Bitcoin, which was worth nearly $1.62 million at the time of the request. After two days of negotiations, Nayana staff said they managed to reduce the ransom demand to 397.6 Bitcoin, or nearly $1 million. In a subsequent announcement, Nayana officials stated that they negotiated with the attackers to pay the ransom demand in three installments, due to the company's inability to produce such a large amount of cash in a short period of time.
On Saturday, June 17, the company said it already paid two of the three payment tranches. In subsequent announcements, Nayana updated clients on the server decryption process, saying the entire operation would take up to ten days due to the vast amount of encrypted data. The company said 153 Linux servers were affected, servers which stored the information of more than 3,400 customers.
Attackers asked for an initial ransom payment of 550 Bitcoin, which was worth nearly $1.62 million at the time of the request. After two days of negotiations, Nayana staff said they managed to reduce the ransom demand to 397.6 Bitcoin, or nearly $1 million. In a subsequent announcement, Nayana officials stated that they negotiated with the attackers to pay the ransom demand in three installments, due to the company's inability to produce such a large amount of cash in a short period of time.
On Saturday, June 17, the company said it already paid two of the three payment tranches. In subsequent announcements, Nayana updated clients on the server decryption process, saying the entire operation would take up to ten days due to the vast amount of encrypted data. The company said 153 Linux servers were affected, servers which stored the information of more than 3,400 customers.
So, outside of the question of where are all your backups, dB logging, aux-copy, snapshots, etc... How did this happen?? (reads bottom part of article)..
Nevermind....
While this is new from the concept of internet transfer, the same kind of story happened every for debt payment regarding drugs or gambling. Don't start blame Bitcoin on that... bad guys just use the best technology around as usual.
What, you thought it was the Chinese?
Lol.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"It's a lot cheaper for us to hire some really awful people to find you and get the money back, so why don't you just hand over the encryption keys right now?
Once again, a company is managed by sales guys not tech guys. What could possibly go wrong?
IT Guy: "We need to upgrade our servers."
Business guy: "That costs too much. Don't bring suggestions like that to a meeting again!"
IT Guy: {{okay.png}}
Oh wait. Maybe it was an inside job?
The gnuplot thickens!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
For one reason, it would be quite difficult to know exactly where these people are based, let alone that there's one-one else near by.
The take-away line for me was at the end where it mentions the affected machines are 153 Linux servers that got encrypted. Linux. Let that sink in. Unless these were VM's running on a Windows hosting base, Linuxland has a large threat to face.
If you pay the ransom in secret, then the guys who set you up this time now know a three of useful things:
1) You are stupid enough to pay ransoms.
2) You are stupid enough to run vulnerable systems which make setting up the demand possible.
3) You have the money to pay these ransoms.
In short, you just lit up an enormous great SUCKER sign right up above your heads, but only for the criminal group that ran the fiddle.
These utter idiots have however publicly said that they paid the ransom. Now every script kiddie on the planet knows those three facts, and they are ALL going to be gunning for the known-rich suckers.
This company can be counted as dead and gone right now. If you own stock in it, get rid soonest, before it becomes worthless.
Trouble is, as soon as you had something like that, it would end up used for fraudulent transactions during normal purchases. I could buy a $800 phone from you, wait until I get the phone, then the bitcoins I paid you with disappear.
every transaction is here https://blockchain.info/
love is just extroverted narcissism
If it takes 10 days to decrypt the data, wouldn't it have taken at least that long to encrypt it? So :
1. Didn't any of the Nayana admins notice any unusual activity? I'm guessing not, given the breadth and depth of their other server configuration shortcomings.
2. Didn't any of the customers notice their data disappearing?
3. If a new file is added to the system at this point will it be encrypted? If an existing encrypted PDF file is renamed with an extension/type NOT in the encryption type list, will it get decrypted?
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
... probably would've cost them more.
Then, lost customers.
Well played, ransomers, well played
charge them for conspiring with and funding criminals
Yes, but the satisfaction gained expending a missile for this purpose makes it worthwhile.
pay the ransom demand in three installments, due to the company's inability to produce such a large amount of cash in a short period of time.
Any company stupid enough that they have to pay ransom in the hope of getting their data back (there's a good chance they won't) deserve to go broke. BACKUPS. CONTINGENCY PLANS. Yeah it takes time and money but it's a lot fucking cheaper than sending random criminals millions of dollars and then listening to the sound of them laughing at you when they simply disappear with the money.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Paying the ransom or using Tomahawk is a very expensive solution. Why not buy a $200K hardware and crack the RSA-2048 private key used for the encryption? Or maybe even cheaper solution is to shell out $50K to trace the Tor logs and pinpoint the servers of this Erebus ransomware.
Well, you now have an idea for a new Kickstarter!
So here's a funny story. Your database gets encrypted. You don't have a backup so you pay a ransom. IF the bad guy is nice, you get a key to decrypt your database again. Since you don't have any sort of backup to compare it to.... how the fuck do you know they haven't inserted/deleted/modified anything in there as well? You don't until things start happening. Even better, the bad guys know that you don't, because you were dumb enough to tell them by paying the ransom. Welcome to phase 2 of your security nightmare. You are now their bitch.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What, they had no DR strategy? This type of incident is just what DR is for. Your data is a smoking hole in the ground. Now, rebuild. You have 24 hours.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Headline should say, "Company would rather pay million dollar ransom than pay for competent help"
Who cares? Why is this is on Slashdot? We all already know. The situation is predictable and happens all the time. Water is wet, news at 11.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
our faith at FaithfUl baCK UPs is that criminals are not that mean.
Globally?
So how do you pay $1M (or any amount) of bitcoin to a the ransomware owners without getting some sort of guarantee from them that they will actually deliver the decrypt key? You just send the transaction and hope they hold up their end of the bargain?
If they were in communication with the bad guys, that means there is some communication trail back to them. I can't see savvy malware people exposing themselves that way.
Paying the ransom or using Tomahawk is a very expensive solution. Why not buy a $200K hardware and crack the RSA-2048 private key used for the encryption?
They say ten days to decrypt? I imagine the encryption took multiple days too. They should have had a good chance at finding a machine where it was still running.
The most recent linux ransomware I've seen was the so-called "motd virus" that used a simplistic python script to do AES-128 encryption with a 512 bit key. That's symmetric. With it running for days as an ordinary process, you can probably spot it and get a core image. It would only take a fraction of a day to try every set of contiguous 512 bits from that image as a key.
Of course, backups are better. But, if they're not using asymmetric encryption and if you can get a process image or an OS image, you can probably search for the key. On a similar note, for wannacry on Windows they found the prime numbers related to the key in memory even after the encryption process was complete.
The ransomware writers allowed them to pay the rest later, so they had to tell the ransomware to postpone the deletion of files.
If they want to backdoor your database, they had the access to do so without drawing attention to their presence by demanding a ransom...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Word needs te get out, that secret service organizations have started to see this behavior of criminals as a threat to national security / national interests.
When MI5 / CIA / FSB people start making people wake up with their testicles in a glass on the nightstand, the willingness of talented hackers to go for the "easy" money will decrease. Till then, every talented guy living in a shithole in eastern Uzbekistan will see this method as a way out of his shitty live.
Why are other peoples sig's always more witty ???
They would have been safe! because you know, Linux!
And who cares if a windows server got infected because it was never patched - still all windows fault!
they had the access to do so without drawing attention to their presence by demanding a ransom...
That doesn't put money in your pocket like a ransom does.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You can trace bitcoins from wallet to wallet. Figuring out who the wallets belong to is more of a problem, particularly if they're in another country.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes