New Ransomware Threat: We’ll Broadcast Data You Won’t Buy Back

Purveyors of a strain of malware called Maze Ransomware have added another term to their extortion deal. Not only will they freeze your computers if you don’t pay up, they will start publishing your data. This ploy has been threatened for years, but according to one security expert quoted in this post from Krebs on Security, this is the first time it was actually carried out. He cites one company that was hit late in November, didn’t pay the ransom, and found that 700MB worth of its data had been released on to a hacking forum. “Ransomware attacks are now data breaches,” he says. The extortionists in this case have one more nasty trick that’s probably a first: They are identifying, on a public website, the company names and websites of the victims who refuse to pay.