We all remember the Dark Overlord (probably). They provided diehard OITNB fans with the first ten episodes of the fifth season. After threatening several other networks, they followed through with at least one promise by releasing a few episodes of Steve Harvey’s new talk show.
TDO must have realized their lack of media coverage with TV networks, as they’ve fallen back into the old habit of targeting health care providers. The hacking group has a small history in hacking similar establishments over the course of the last couple years – from doctor’s offices to hospitals.
After enjoying their short remise from non-TV based jobs, the Dark Overlord went back to targeting their usual victims. This time, the establishment was a well-known Beverly Hills health care provider. While TDO demanded their usual ransom, it is unknown whether the Beverly Hills healthcare provider paid up.
Commonsense would say not to; especially knowing that Larson Studios paid the ransom and still faced the leak of their TV show.
“The company’s owners, Jill and Rick Larson, say they transferred $50,000 worth of bitcoin to the attackers in an attempt to prevent the release of stolen content, Variety reports. But The Dark Overlord released the series to file-sharing networks anyway.”
Hopefully TDO’s new victim didn’t pay the ransom because their information was already leaked on Twitter. This included addresses and phone numbers of recognized clients. On a slightly funnier note, TDO’s official Twitter page was banned in response to their illegal information dump.
The bottom line here is to obviously not trust hackers. If you are ever a victim of ransomware, do not pay the ransom. Even if your files are at risk, don’t take the chance. Instead, work on securing your system to prevent another attack from happening in the future.
If you do pay the ransom, you could get your files back . . . or you could suffer the consequences of the cyber-attack AND be out $50,000.