Kids Extorting Big Companies With Ransomware Attacks

Dan Goodin, writing for Ars Technica, says four huge organizations – Boeing, DP World, Allen & Overy, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China – share a dubious honor. They have recently been extorted by teenage hackers with enough tech savvy to exploit a critical vulnerability that security experts warned of more than a month ago.

A patch is available, but none of the companies applied it. All four confirmed succumbing to security incidents. The Chinese Bank reportedly paid ransom for encryption keys to data that was unavailable since the attack. The other three are mum on ransom payments.

Ransomware groups are often staffed mostly by teenagers, according to Goodin. That’s one reason they aren’t taken seriously by big companies. Goodin calls them a threat to civil society as long as organizations keep paying.

The vulnerability this cyber brat pack exploited recently is called CitrixBleed. It has a severity rating of 9.4 out of a possible 10. It gives attackers the equivalent of a desktop PC inside the victim’s internal network.

According to an independent security researcher, none of the four companies had patched CitrixBleed at the time they were hacked. In a statement provided to journalists, Boeing admitted suffering a cybersecurity incident and said it is also aware that a ransomware actor released information allegedly taken from its systems.

“We continue to investigate the incident,” said Boeing, “and will remain in contact with law enforcement, regulatory authorities, and potentially impacted parties, as appropriate. We remain confident this incident poses no threat to aircraft or flight safety.”