Inside the Hive

In the first 11 months of 2021, over 60% of all incidents investigated by Group-IB involved ransomware. Ransomware has finally established itself as cyber threat number one.

In July 2021, international media reported that REvil ransomware operators demanded a record-breaking ransom of $70 millions from meat giant JBS in exchange for providing the decryption key. The record didn’t stand long. It took the ransomware empire less than half a year to grow this ransom demand 3-fold to $240 millions. In November 2021, Europe’s largest consumer electronics retailer Media Markt fell prey to a ransomware attack. It turned out that the perpetrator behind the incident was Hive, which used to take a back seat. Both threat actors worked under the…