Creative Ransomware Extortion: New Malware Capabilities with ChatGPT
Ransomware syndicates are now focusing on extorting victims with creative means that do not involve data recovery. Threat actors are becoming more personal by leveraging victim data in new ways to damage personal or group reputations. This new technique will be explored by major ransomware syndicates like Blackcat, which will exert pressure on organizations to pay.
In a recent cyberattack, threat actors tapped into the webcams of employees at Western Digital meetings and threatened to release the media they captured. This new approach is likely to see a significant adoption among ransomware syndicates because it shifts the risk calculation to victims beyond simply time and money.
The downside of this development is that the evolving cyberattacks may become more difficult to predict once the threat actor breaches the network. Security professionals are accustomed to modeling ransomware by focusing on high-value intellectual property as it relates to vital proprietary data. Threat actors may now shift to targeting vulnerable or risk-averse individuals, making it more challenging for IT security to anticipate new creative use cases for data.
