Ransomware gets personal: 'We-know-where-you-are kind of stuff'

Tim Beasley, a senior incident response consultant at Semperis, was investigating a cyberattack involving Russia’s Midnight Blizzard when a package containing nesting dolls and other regional gifts showed up on his doorstep.

At the time, Beasley served as the lead investigator for Microsoft’s Detection and Response Team (DART).

He assumed it was from the group, which has been linked to the Kremlin’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), although the sender didn’t leave a note.

“Just little souvenirs and gift basket stuff from that area of the world,” he told The Register.

“We-know-where-you-are kind of stuff.

It’s a real eye-opener when you get that type of thing.” While digital intrusions having physical consequences is nothing new, cybercriminals in recent years have turned to real-life harm and mental and physical trauma to force victims into paying extortion demands.

Some groups even use cybercrime as a gateway drug to real-life violence.

Over the summer, Europol and its partners' investigators flagged 4,340 “horrific” URLs for removal as part of an ongoing crackdown on The Com (short for community), a loosely knit network of online groups whose young members participate in a range of illicit activities including hacking, swatting, digital extortion, real-life shootings, and other physical violence.

“We’ve seen violence as a service get used,” Beasley said.

He’s also investigated ransomware attacks where C-suite executives receive pictures of their kids’ schools directly from the cybercriminals in an attempt to apply psychological pressure to pay the extortion fee.

“I've seen threats involving people's families, from social media reconnaissance, and in our world you more and more come to expect it, which is unfortunate,” Beasley said.

This type of psychological intimidation and harm against victim companies’ employees has seen an uptick in the last several years to the point where it's almost common.

Thirty-seven percent of ransomware attacks involved psychological or physical threats against staff, according to Semperis’ annual ransomware risk report.

The global study of 1,200 post-ransomware organizations conducted over the first half of the year found attackers threatening psychological intimidation (23 percent) and physical threats (17 percent), to force payment.