New ransomware variant: Hive group blackmails Media Markt and Saturn

Ransomware reaches a new level with the hacker group Hive: The hackers not only encrypt data, but also pull it from the servers of the attack victims. Then they threaten to publish sensitive data online. So the strategy of backing up data no longer works. That makes these attacks even more dangerous than traditional ransomware. Hive's most recent victim was the Ceconomy network (MediaMarkt/Saturn).

In its current IT security status report, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) describes such attacks as "hush money extortion". The hacker group Hive has specialized in this approach and has been sending massive phishing emails to companies since mid-2021 in order to launch corresponding attacks. The phishing emails contain a link to a website via which the malware can be accessed on the computer. In addition to Ceconomy, companies from the medical sector have already been affected - which is particularly sensitive because it involved the theft of patient data.

Protection against the Hive Group is not possible with conventional security strategies. This is because the tool set of the malware used varies greatly. Classic AV scanners have no chance of keeping up with the detection. The perfidious thing is that tools are often used that are also required for other functions in the IT system - and therefore cannot simply be switched off.

How can you protect yourself from hive attacks?

R&S®Browser in the Box offers effective and proactive protection against the new ransomware variant. It protects both against an attacker gaining access to the corporate network and against data being sucked out. The decisive factor here is the multi-level security concept, which conventional “secure browsers” do not have:

• The browser itself is locked away from the rest of the system in a virtual environment. Only explicitly wanted downloads are possible (no drive-by downloads). Malware is kept away from the rest of the user's PC.
• All web pages are opened in isolation from the host system. An attack on the host system directly from the browser is therefore impossible.
• The internal company network (intranet) and the Internet are completely separated from each other. Malware can therefore not report back to the command & control server to receive the initial commands for an attack. Malware also cannot upload data to a malware vendor's leak server. This makes data theft impossible.

For more information on the R&S®Browser in the Box, click here: