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   Ransomware gangs are now expanding to physical threats in the real world   
      
   Date:   
   Fri, 01 Aug 2025 12:04:00 +0000   
      
   Description:   
   More than half of CEOs threatened with physical violence unless their company   
   paid a ransom demand.   
      
   FULL STORY   
      
   Ransomware gangs seem to be getting desperate when it comes to getting   
   results, as besides encrypting and leaking data on the web, theyve also   
   started threatening CEOs with physical violence.    
      
   Cybersecurity researchers Semperis claim over the past 12 months, in 40% of   
   ransomware incidents, the CEOs of the affected company were also physically   
   threatened - which rises to 46% among US-based organizations.    
      
   But even paying up may not be enough, as the research found more than half   
   (55%) of organizations who paid a demand did so multiple times, with nearly a   
   third (29%) of those firms paying three or more times, and 15% were not even   
   sent decryption keys, or received corrupted keys.   
      
   Physical violence    
      
   Threatening to file a regulatory complaint also seems to be a popular tactic,   
   Semperis found. It was observed in 47% of attacks, rising to 58% in the US.    
      
   In 2023, the infamous BlackCat ransomware group reported one of its victims    
   to the SEC to get them to pay, with this tactic due to growing regulatory   
   requirements around cyber incident reporting, including the SECs four-day   
   disclosure rule for publicly traded companies.    
      
   Ransomware has been around for more than a decade, and during this time it    
   has evolved multiple times. It started with just encryption, which companies   
   quickly mitigated by keeping offline backups of all the key data.    
      
   Criminals then responded by stealing the data first, and threatening to   
   release it on the dark web unless a payments made. This strategy, known as   
   double extortion works rather well, so well in fact that some criminals   
   abandoned the encryption part altogether and are just focused on stealing   
   files.    
      
   However, many companies refuse to budge, forcing the criminals into even   
   bigger extremes.    
      
   In some cases, they pair the encryption of the back-end with a Distributed   
   Denial of Service (DDoS) on the front-end, bringing the entire business to a   
   screeching halt. Phone calls to victim organizations were also observed in a   
   couple of cases, and now, we can add physical threats to the mix, as well.    
      
   While some circumstances might leave the company in a non-choice situation,    
   we should acknowledge that it's a downpayment on the next attack," noted   
   Mickey Bresman, CEO of Semperis.    
      
   "Every dollar handed to ransomware gangs fuels their criminal economy,   
   incentivizing them to strike again. The only real way to break the ransomware   
   scourge is to invest in resilience, creating an option to not pay ransom," he   
   commented.   
      
   ======================================================================   
   Link to news story:   
   https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/ransomware-gangs-are-now-expanding-to-p   
   hysical-threats-in-the-real-world   
      
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