Over on SuspectFile, @amvinfe has been busy exposing Akira’s false promises to its victims. In two posts this week, he reports on what happened with one business in New Jersey and one in Germany that decided to pay Akira’s ransom demands. He was able to report on it all because Akira failed to secure its negotiations chat server. Anyone who knows where to look can follow along if a victim contacts Akira to try to negotiate any payment for a decryptor or data deletion.

In one case, the victim paid Akira $200k after repeatedly asking for — and getting — assurances that this would all be kept confidential. In the second case, Akira demanded $6.9 million but eventually accepted that victim’s offer of $800k. The negotiations made clear that Akira had read the terms of the victim’s cyberinsurance policy and used that to calculate their demands.

If the two victims hoped to keep their names or their breaches out of the news, they may have failed. Although SuspectFile did not name them, others with access to the chats might report on the incidents. Anyone who read the chats would possess the file lists of everything Akira claimed to have exfiltrated from each victim. Depending on their file-naming conventions, filenames may reveal proprietary or sensitive information and often reveal the name of the victim.

So the take-home messages for current victims of Akira:

Akira has not been keeping its negotiations with you secure and confidential.
Paying Akira’s ransom demands is no guarantee that others will not obtain your data or find out about your breach.
Even just negotiating with Akira may be sufficient to provide researchers and journalists with data you do not want shared.
If you pay Akira and they actually give you accurate information about how they gained access and elevated privileges, you are now more at risk from other attackers while you figure out how to secure your network.

Habib Mohammadi reports:

A group of unidentified hackers has breached the Taliban’s databases, leaking documents from 21 ministries and government agencies, some of which appear to be classified, according to reports circulating online.

The leaked files reportedly include documents from the Taliban-controlled ministries of finance, justice, foreign affairs, information and culture, telecommunications, and mining, as well as the Supreme Court and the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

The hackers have published hundreds of these documents on a website called “Talibleaks.”

Threat actors called Vanir Ransomware Group posted a few listings in July. Tonight, however, their onion site has a seized message:

” THIS HIDDEN SITE HAS BEEN SEIZED
by the State Bureau of Investigation Baden-Württemberg as a part of a law enforcement action taken against Vanir Ransomware Group “

On October 17, the FBI issued a Public Service Announcement, Cybercriminals are Targeting Plastic Surgery Offices and Patients. Five days later, DataBreaches learned that there had been another attack on a plastic surgery practice where patient data had allegedly been stolen and is in danger of being leaked publicly. It would not be surprising if the FBI knew about the attack and that it was the impetus for the newly released PSA.

There are new developments on the cybersecurity attack that has crippled internet services at Bluefield University. We’ve learned through “RamAlert” texts sent to students, faculty and staff that the cyber attackers are now directly communicating with everyone on the alert system. They have identified themselves as “AvosLocker” and are demanding payment in return for not leaking students’ private information. The FBI considers AvosLocker to be ransomware. In March 2022, they released an advisory on it. They said avoslocker has “Targeted victims across multiple critical infrastructure sectors in the U.S. Including…The financial services, critical manufacturing, and government facilities sectors.”