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Blackcat Claims Responsible Cyber Attack on the University of Pisa
An indigenous ransomware hacking group known as BlackCat has claimed responsibility for a cyber attack on the University of Pisa.
Recently, the notorious criminals gave out an outrageous ransom regarding the Saturday attack, stating the deadline for the ransom to be paid before June 16. These criminals further stated the challenges the university will face if $4.5million is not paid.
Italy faced a double attack as well as another ransomware attack at Palermo at the same time which interfered with municipal elections. This led to a significant loss of sensitive and confidential information which was accessed by the threat actors.
The hackers gave the victims access to a chat thread on a protected browser to enable easy communication between them regarding their demands. The BlackCats were keen to achieve their intended motive to perpetrate the victims as quickly as possible.
BlackCat Tactics
It was stated that the ransom to be paid is for the victims to gain access to their encrypted file by using the encrypted key provided by these perpetrators. BlackCat, also known as ALPHV, devised a technique known as double extortion to reveal sensitive data if the ransom was not paid.
They also devised triple extortion to exploit the breach by selling it on the dark web if an early response was not given to their demands. The University of Pisa was contacted by CyberSecurity360 for a formal meeting to resolve the data breach, although a response has not yet been given. Nonetheless, a brief solution has been proffered.
Thus, data breaches from this section can be extensively exploitable if proper vulnerability management is not observed. Continuous scanning of systems and infrastructure.
Patching of software bugs, updating systems to the latest version and training on employees should routinely be observed at the University to reduce the indulgence of attacks from threat actors.
