DOGE Ransomware Hackers Demand $1 Trillion
The same criminal group behind the DOGE Big Balls ransomware attack has just upped the ante. A newly updated ransom note sent to victims is now trolling Elon Musk and DOGE with a demand for, are you sitting down, one trillion dollars.
Although there is no doubt that ransomware threats should be taken very seriously, what with a massive surge in ransomware attacks this year, new password-cracking tools being employed to gain initial access, and some very concerning political moves by big names in the extortion-racket industry, not all the players take themselves seriously it would seem.
The ransomware group behind the recent DOGE Big Balls threat, using a variant of existing malware known as FOG, and trying to pin responsibility for the attacks on a well-known member of the Department of Government Efficiency team, has just updated their ransom note. As detailed in an April 21 security report by researchers Nathaniel Morales and Sarah Pearl Camiling at Trend Micro, the ransomware now appears to have started trolling DOGE and Elon Musk mercilessly. In reference to the now-infamous Musk demand for federal workers to email DOGE what they had achieved, leaving them fearing for their jobs if they did not comply, the ransom note has been altered to read:
'Give me five bullet points on what you accomplished for work last week or you owe me a TRILLION dollars.'
'The ransomware payload embedded in the samples has been verified as FOG ransomware,' the Trend Micro report warned, 'an active ransomware family targeting both individuals and organizations.' As such, it's imperative that you do not think that just because the attackers might act like clowns, the threat itself isn't serious.
Indeed, the ransomware demand itself is all business to begin with. 'We are the ones who encrypted your data and also copied some of it to our internal resource,' the attackers state. They then advise the victim that the sooner they are contacted, the sooner they can get everything resolved, offering instructions on using a Tor browser to get the next steps.
The DOGE references are not the only trolling in the updated ransom note, there's also a 'Don't snitch now' warning. This could be in response to the ransomware informer platform that I have previously reported on. The humor, and I guess that's what it is an attempt at, continues with a warning from the attackers that they have 'grabbed your trilatitude and trilongitude (the most accurate) coordinates of where you live,' in order to prove that they are lying. Not lying and not funny, but not to be ignored either. Report any such attacks to the FBI here.
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