Lockbit Is Back With 2 Other Victims
Infamous Lockbit extortion ring announces 2 new victims on their public platform. These are Sundbirsta from Sweden and the Canadian Vertdure.
- The victims were given time until the 13th of March this year to finalize negotiations and pay up the ransom
- Neither of those affected by Lockbit’s intrusion commented on the attacks, but they might publish a public statement soon
- These attacks come soon after Lockbit’s public dismantling by the FBI, making them a power statement more than anything else
- The FBI announced the group’s demise in February of 2024, but Lockbit wasted no time in proving the law enforcement agency wrong
Currently, Lockbit is the most prolific, dangerous, and profitable ransomware organization in the world. According to the FBI’s own statistics, the infamous extortion ring has racked up upwards of 2,000 victims worldwide so far.
Many of these are high-value public and private organizations because Lockbit prioritizes the target’s effective revenue. After all, it’s all about the money, and Lockbit’s success in this regard speaks volumes.
As the latest reports show, Lockbit’s estimative gains linked to their cybercriminal activities are little over $121 million. This places Lockbit in the first position on the list of the most profitable ransomware organizations.
To be noted that Lockbit also came out with its 3.0 version in 2022 and that plans are underway for a 4.0 version as well. This goes to show that Lockbit cannot be underestimated and that the group is more powerful and influential than previously thought.
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About Lockbit’s Future
Lockbit is one of the oldest ransomware groups today, after having hit the public sphere in 2019 with the .abcd extension. But the organization didn’t establish itself as a noteworthy cybercriminal entity until 2020, when it racked its activity up.
2021 marked a turning point for Lockbit, along with the release of its 2.0 version. Following this, the already notorious ransomware gang became even more aggressive, to the point of marking no fewer than 28 victims per month in some cases.
The FBI became involved pretty early on, supervising the organization’s activity and collecting information about its structure and operations. February 2024 arrived and the FBI announced operation Cronos successfully seized Lockbit’s main website.
This didn’t last long, as Lockbit bounced back shortly after and marked the FBI as their first target. This period also coincided with the release of the 3.0 version, showing that the gang was virtually unaffected by the FBI’s operation.
Moving forward, one of Lockbit’s goals appears to be business as usual. The group uses the double-extortion technique to hit high-value targets and conduct synchronized operations across multiple states.
Nothing indicates that anything will change in the near future. If anything, Lockbit appears to be even more dangerous today, after the FBI’s operation, compared to 2023. This is largely due to the release of their 3.0 version, but that’s not all.
As a result of the Cronos operation, the FBI managed to uncover the Lockbit-NG-Dev version, which experts presume to be the unpolished state of the 4.0 version. According to specialists, this new version has already been under advanced development for a while.
So, it’s safe to say that Lockbit doesn’t appear to slow down its development anytime soon.