The British postal and courier company Royal Mail has been listed on the LockBit ransomware group's extortion site, with the criminals giving them a deadline of Thursday, February 9th to make a payment. It is unclear what data the criminal group has managed to steal, but they are threatening to publish it all. Last month, Royal Mail announced a cyber incident on January 11th, which caused their ability to send parcels and letters to international recipients to come to a halt. An extortion note sent to the company by LockBit was seen by The Record, claiming responsibility for the attack. The listing was initially posted on Monday, then updated on Tuesday. Royal Mail, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange and had revenues of over £12.6 billion in 2021, has not paid the ransom or negotiations have stalled. This attack makes Royal Mail one of LockBit's many high-profile victims. The ransomware-as-a-service group is one of the most active online, with more than a thousand victims listed on its darknet site. Royal Mail has been working to recover from the attack, and has been able to export an increasing number of items to a growing number of international destinations. They are still unable to process new parcels purchased through Post Office branches, and are encouraging customers to use Parcelforce Worldwide service or drop off items that have been labeled online. The U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre has launched a ransomware hub to support organizations in improving their own resilience, and ransomware incidents have been responsible for the majority of the British government's recent crisis management Cobra meetings. British government sources dealing with the ransomware issue have said that they are seeing an increasingly successful business model with ransom demands increasing and payments increasing, making it harder to avoid paying a ransom.
This Cyber News was published on therecord.media. Publication date: Tue, 07 Feb 2023 21:08:03 +0000