Based on a captivating report by Jon DiMaggio of Analyst1, who spent a 12 months undercover gathering intelligence on the LockBit group, the ransomware gang is attempting to cowl up “the very fact it typically can’t persistently publish stolen knowledge.”

And that’s clearly an issue for a cybercriminal gang which is utilizing the specter of publishing exfiltrated knowledge as its main lever for extorting a ransom from its victims.

DiMaggio claims that the issue “is because of limitations in [LockBit’s] backend infrastructure and obtainable bandwidth.”

“LockBit just lately up to date its infrastructure to deal with these deficiencies. Nevertheless, this can be a gimmick to make it seem that it corrected the beforehand talked about downside with posting sufferer knowledge. It claims victims’ “FILES ARE PUBLISHED”. Typically, this can be a lie and a ploy to cowl up the truth that LockBit can’t persistently host and publish giant quantities of sufferer knowledge via its admin panel, as promised to its affiliate companions. Additional, over the previous six months, LockBit has introduced empty threats it did not act upon after many victims refused to pay. But, someway, nobody has observed.”

I suppose in case you steal an enormous quantity of knowledge from many firms you must guarantee that you’ve the space for storing and server infrastructure to leak it to the world.

On account of these and different points (DiMaggio says a deadline to launch an up to date model of the ransomware has been missed, for example), the group’s popularity has been tarnished and a few of LockBit’s high associates have left for different ransomware teams in current months.

My guess is that firms is perhaps lots much less inclined to pay a ransom in the event that they believed it was much less doubtless that their stolen knowledge was truly going to be revealed…

It is going to be attention-grabbing to see if LockBit can deal with its infrastructure subject – maybe by providing the information it has stolen from victimised firms by way of torrents as an alternative.

Discovered this text attention-grabbing? Observe Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to learn extra of the unique content material we submit.