New research from Zscaler’s ThreatLabz 2024 Ransomware Report has uncovered a $75 million (£58 million) ransomware payment.

The record-breaking sum was paid out to the Dark Angels group, a ‘ransomware family’ which targets victims across various industries, including in healthcare, government, finance, and education. 

In most cases, the Dark Angels group steals a vast amount of data, typically in the range of 1-10 TB. For large businesses, the group has been known to extract between 10-100 TB of data, which can take days to weeks to transfer.

The report warns that the group, named by ThreatLabz as one of the top five ransomware families, will be a big threat to businesses in the year ahead. Of particular concern is that other ransomware groups will adopt similar tactics, focusing on high value targets and large-scale data theft to maximize financial gains.

Other key findings include new data showing that the energy sector experienced a 527% year-over-year increase in ransomware attacks, likely due to its critical nature and the high ransom potential it offers to attackers.

Zscaler’s analysis of blocked attacks found an almost 18% increase in ransomware attacks since last year, with the number of extorted companies on data leak sites growing by 57.8% in the same period year-over-year.

The exploitation of system vulnerabilities continues to be a prevalent attack vector for ransomware, while the use of voice-based social engineering to gain entry into networks is on the rise – a technique made popular by Scattered Spider and the Qakbot threat group.

Recommended reading

• UK Businesses Face New Cyber-attacks Every 44 Seconds in Q2 2024
• Half of Cybersecurity Professionals Expect to Burnout Within the Next Year
• Cyber Leaders Reveal Compliance and Boardroom Struggles

Deepen Desai, chief security officer at Zscaler, said of the findings: “The increasing use of ransomware-as-a-service models, along with numerous zero-day attacks on legacy systems, a rise in phishing attacks and the emergence of AI-powered attacks, has led to record breaking ransom payments.

“Organisations must prioritize Zero Trust architecture to strengthen their security posture against ransomware attacks.”

The UK remains one of the top five countries targeted by ransomware, with recent research showing that recovery costs for two critical infrastructure sectors, energy and water, quadrupled to £2.3 million over the past year.