Report: Mysterious ‘Nevada Group’ Launches Mass Ransomware Attack

Hackers dubbed the “Nevada Group” have reportedly launched one of the largest ever ransomware attacks.

The goal of the as-yet-unidentified group is to paralyze computer networks of nearly 5,000 victims in Europe and the U.S., the Financial Times (FT) reported Thursday (Feb. 23).

These attacks come amid a sharp increase in ransomware attacks targeting industrial businesses, and a corresponding rise in companies prioritizing digital fraud and risk management tools.

According to the FT, the Nevada Group — a nickname given by security researchers — began its attacks three weeks ago by exploiting a vulnerability in code found in cloud servers. The report quotes Shmuel Gihon, security researcher at Israel’s CyberInt, who worries the attack could lead to copycats.

“The scale of this campaign is one of the biggest we have seen, (and since it is ongoing), the real problem is that veteran groups see the potential damage they can do,” Gihon said.

The report said victims — ranging from American and Hungarian universities to Italian shipping and construction firms — declined to comment, saying they’d been asked not to do so by law enforcement.

Authorities have yet to identify the cybercriminals, guessing only from their internet recruiting announcements that it is a mix of hackers from Russia and China.

The FT report comes weeks after findings from cybersecurity firm Dragos, which showed that cyberattacks on industrial targets had jumped 87% due in part to the growth of ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS).

Meanwhile, recent research by PYMNTS finds that criminals are increasingly exploiting weaknesses in financial institutions’ (FIs) systems, with nearly 60% of FIs seeing an increase in fraud rates last year.

Credit unions (CUs) “have been particular targets,” PYMNTS wrote Thursday. “According to one report, nearly 70% of CUs and community banks experienced first-party fraud, involving individuals misrepresenting their identities, situations or intentions when interacting with FIs.”

The impact of this fraud is substantial. The Credit Union Tracker found that for close to 60% of FIs, the cost of fraudulent transactions increased in 2022.

For CUs specifically, the numbers are also bleak: 41% of community banks and CUs estimate that their losses over the past 12 months ranged between $500,000 and $1 million, while a fifth of these FIs estimate even higher losses, costing between $1 million and $10 million.

There are reputational harms as well, with surveys showing that many consumers will seek out a new FI after a fraud event, and some consumers might avoid doing business with the FI in the first place.