- Italian liqueur, Campari, has been attacked by the Ragnar Locker ransomware gang earlier in November.
- They opened a Facebook ads campaign to pressure Campari to pay about $15 million in Bitcoin as ransom.
A ransomware gang, Ragnar Locker, is now taking pride in their cyber-crime actions. They are running adverts for their recent attacks in order to pressure victims to comply with their million-dollar demand as ransom, which they mostly prefer in cryptocurrencies. This is the case today for Campari, the popular Italian alcoholic liqueur, which was attacked by the Ragnar Locker malware reportedly on November 3.
Ransomware gang demands $15 million
As Threat Post reported, the Ragnar Locker gang launched their attack on the liqueur company, which enabled them to steal about two terabytes (2TB) of sensitive information. Campari itself confirmed the attack, according to the report. As usual, the ransomware gang threatened to release the data to the public, except the company complies with paying about $15 million in ransom via bitcoin.
The Ragnar Locker gangs took their persuasive tactics further as the company delayed in paying the Bitcoin ransom. On November 9, a Facebook advert was spotted by Brian Krebs, a cybersecurity researcher, which was informing the public users about the Ragnar Locker malware attack on Campari. Krebs said the ransomware gangs used a hacked account to run the adverts, which was already seen by over 7,000 users before Facebook’s interception.
Ragnar Locker threats
The development today shows the extent ransomware gangs are ready to reach in order to achieve their ill-driven goal. In the words of Cerberus Sentinel’s Chris Clements, “cybercrime groups have no shame in their extortion attempts.” Using hacked accounts to pressurize victims for ransoms is another novel tactic, according to Clements. Possibly, this may result in problems for the original account owners, of which they don’t know anything about it.
The use of cryptocurrencies by these gangs could be one other factor encouraging the threats, as such medium keeps them anonymous, at least to some point.
