Russian hackers REvil demand $70MILLION for decryption key weeks after Biden told Putin to stop protecting hackers

  • Satnam Narang, a researcher at cyber exposure company Tenable, tweeted a screenshot of a blog post the hacking collective had posted on the dark web
  • ‘On Friday (02.07.2021) we launched an attack on MSP providers. More than a million systems were infected,’ the post from REvil reads 
  •  REvil was demanding ransoms of up to $5 million
  • Cybersecurity teams worked feverishly Sunday to stem the impact of the single biggest global ransomware attack on record 

The largest ransomware attack on record has hit the IT systems of up to 1million companies on virtually every continent as Russian-linked hackers demand $70million in cryptocurrency to fix it.

Swedish grocery stores, schools in New Zealand, and two major Dutch IT firms were among the victims of hacking group REvil which launched its attack on Friday after breaching the systems of US-based software firm Kaseya.

Joe Biden, who last month warned President Putin to take action against hacking groups targeting the US from Russia, said the FBI is investigating the latest hack and he will take action if Moscow is deemed to be responsible.

Analysts said it is no coincidence that the attack coincided with the July 4 holiday weekend, when companies would be under-staffed and less able to respond.