Aeronautics giant Boeing confirms that a $200 million ransom demand was attached to the cyberattack it suffered in November 2023, claimed by LockBit. This announcement comes the day after the arrest of LockBitSupp, the head of the pro-Russian hacker gang, his real name
Dmitry Khoroshev.
After suffering a high-profile cyberattack in November 2023, Boeing played the discretion card, only confirming a “cyber incident” which had no impact on the safety of its flights. However, the aeronautics and defense giant was unable to prevent 43 GB of sensitive data from flying towards the pro-Russian hacker gang LockBit.
It was the day after the arrest of the group’s captain,
Dmitry Khoroshev, better known in the industry as LockBitSupp, that Boeing comes out of silence and confirms that LockBit had asked him for a ransom of 200 million dollars.
LockBit world champion of excessive ransom demands
But it clearly takes more to impress Boeing which, in addition to admitting to having been ransomed to the tune of $200 million by LockBit, indicates that it did not give in to blackmail over the disclosure of stolen data. This amount, although it seems exorbitant and is a priori the highest that LockBit has asked for, is not unusual if we look at the demands of Dmitry Khoroshev’s gang.
Between 2019, the year of its birth, and 2024, the group, considered the most harmful in the world, collected, according to the British government, 1 billion dollars in ransoms around the world, with amounts ranging from 5 to 70 million for those who have been confirmed. It is therefore not far-fetched to imagine that the 200 million claimed from Boeing are real, whether the aircraft manufacturer pays them or not.
We can cite for example the 10 million dollars requested from the Corbeil-Essonnes hospital (Essonne), later reduced to 2 million, the 60 million dollars in exchange for data from the British automobile retailer Continental, or even the 70 million in counterparty of very sensitive data concerning TSMC,
the chip supplier for Apple, Intel, NVIDIA and AMD.
The FBI puts its head
Dmitry Khoroshev priced and offered $10 million reward
It is therefore not disproportionate for the FBI to offer a $10 million reward to anyone who would enable the capture of the LockBit leader. And there is reason to want his head. The day after its dismantling on February 21, 2024, many cyber experts predicted that LockBit could rise from the ashes. They had hollow noses. Indeed, a few days after the international Cronos operation neutralized the gang, its eponymous ransomware continued to wreak havoc across the world.
The group returned to service just a few days after being knocked out by Cronos, proudly announcing the restoration of its servers and that it has new TOR domains. Finally, he continues to be talked about in a major communication coup by claiming responsibility on April 30, 2024 for the cyberattack on the Simone Veil University Hospital in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes), which occurred on April 16, 2024.
While Europol describes it as the hacker group “ the most prolific and dangerous in the world “, the biggest unknown remains whether the arrest of LockBitSupp, aka Dmitry Khoroshev, will put an end to LockBit’s saga.
Source : Cyberscoop
2