Rede Record suffers cyber attack and criminals ask for US$5 million in ransom

This is a machine translation of Eset's press release

One of the characteristics that has stood out about ransomware is that its attacks have become increasingly targeted, according to ESET, a leader in proactive threat detection.

An example of this was the incident suffered by Rede Record last Saturday (08), allegedly caused by BlackCat malware, a ransomware as a service (RaaS). According to information released by the press, criminals had access to information such as personal data of employees, credential network map for local and remote services and financial information of the broadcaster. New information points out that criminals are asking for a ransom of at least $5 million to release the files.

“There is a combination of social engineering and professionalization of ransomware groups that investigate the profile of the target even before executing more specific attacks. In addition, these criminals began not only to encrypt the data obtained, but also created strategies for exposing and leaking data if they do not receive a ransom payment, causing reputational risks to companies”, explains Daniel Barbosa, security specialist at information from ESET.

In the case of the broadcaster, cybercriminals promise that after receiving the requested amount, they will deliver the key application to remove the ransomware, give an overview of how they managed to access the system, offer security recommendations and show evidence that the data was deleted from your domain. Otherwise, they will publish all the information obtained on their blog.

Faced with the alleged attack suffered by Rede Record, the station had to interrupt its programming: on Saturday (08), the program Fala Brasil was replaced by Todo Mundo Odeia o Chris; on Sunday, among other changes, the TV show Hora do Faro had a rerun of Vai Dar Namoro. In addition to programming, the broadcaster's audience monitoring data were also affected, since access to Ibope information was limited. So far, Rede Record has not officially commented on the incident.

Daniel Barbosa points out some guidelines that companies can follow to avoid this type of attack: “It is important that organizations guarantee adequate protection for all devices, whether they are workstations or servers, owned or outsourced, in addition to the implementation of security processes. permissions that guarantee the concept of 'least privilege' access. Another significant point to mitigate the risks is the investment in awareness actions for all employees, who can be the company's main vulnerable points”.

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