You can learn more about LockBit and the danger it poses to your organization in our 2023 State of Malware report. Individual attacks can bring entire organizations to a halt and raise multi-million-dollar ransoms. Ransomware-as-a-service is the most lucrative and dangerous form of cybercrime. Thankfully, Pierce Transit managed to keep operations going, but undoubtedly there will be financial losses resulting from system failure and damage restoration in the short- and long-term.

Public transportation is an essential service and any long-term disruption of its internal networks could have a devastating effect on the people who rely on it to get to school, their work, or medical appointments. The majority of its operations have now been fully restored and Pierce Transit says it plans to implement new cybersecurity monitoring tools and security measures. A spokeswoman stated: “We are dedicated to informing our community, as appropriate, as our inquiry progresses.” If it turns out that LockBit managed to steal and leak client information, the company intends to let them know. Even if a ransomware victim pays for a decryption key, it takes time to restore systems and the total damages are almost always a multiple of the ransom.Īccording to The Record, The incident has been reported to law enforcement agencies, and forensic experts were brought in to investigate the nature and scope of the event. The eye-watering ransom demand is just one of the costs of an attack like this. The ransomware group claims to have stolen contracts, client information, non-disclosure agreements, correspondence, and more, all of which are now on sale. Publishing data like this is normally a sign that negotiations have broken down or that the victim does not intend to pay. On February 28, the LockBit ransomware group published details of the attack on Pierce Transit, along with a public demand for just shy of $2 million in return for the stolen data.

And it hasn't tempered its ambitions in 2023-last month it tried to get $80 million out of UK’s Royal Mail, but was politely shown the door by its negotiator. The largest ransom demand it made in 2022 was a staggering $50 million. It accounted for almost a third of all known RaaS attacks last year, peaking at almost half of all known ransomware attacks in September 2022. The attack began on February 14, 2023, and required Pierce Transit to implement temporary workarounds, to maintain the service of the transit system which transports around 18,000 people every day.īased on the number of known attacks, Lockbit has been the most widely used ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) for some time now. Pierce Transit is a public transit operator in Washington state. The Pierce County Public Transportation Benefit Area Corporation (Pierce Transit) has fallen victim to a cyberattack using LockBit ransomware.

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