A real blackmail at the base of the new campaigns implemented by some hackers. The concept is simple: either the company pays the ransom or the cybercriminals spread fake news aimed at damaging the company’s image. This is the new trend detected by cybersecurity experts Cynet CyOpswho warn users about this dangerous mix between extortion and fake news.
To operate in this way would be the so-called ransomware time, which however, to the detriment of the name, are gradually abandoning ransomware techniques to devote themselves to spreading false, often defamatory news. Companies – explains Cynet – they would then be more inclined to pay the ransom provided that their public image is safeguarded.
In the crosshairs of these new malicious campaigns – destined to increase in 2023 – they would mainly be government agencies and publicly traded companies. Realities, therefore, which would suffer important repercussions in the event of scandals, it doesn’t matter if they are constructed.
Cybersecurity: how hackers exploit fake news
Cynet explains to us that cybercriminals, starting from samples of previous data breaches that refer to a specific company, create new samples and with them self-proclaim the success of an attack that in truth never happened. The first reason is that these gangs want to climb the rankings in order to have more requests for affiliations (according to the results of the research, starting from the Conti data breach, it emerged that the number of affiliates is essential for growing the turnover of these gangs).
The second motivation consists instead in the creation of a disinformation strategy to achieve two further purposes:
“In this scenario, companies are called to pay even more attention to the reliability of information sources – he says Marco Lucchina, Channel Manager Italy, Spain & Portugal of Cynet – not to give in to alarmism and, at the same time, to plan the adoption of defense systems so as not to be caught unprepared in the event of an attack”.