A Digital Shadows investigation saw a twist in the classic gambit of acquiring a company’s valuable data, threatening to release the data if a ransom is not paid, and then putting pressure on the victim through sharing the data with journalists. The target was a criminal marketplace, widely advertised in underground Russian forums:

“On October 24th, a user posted on Pastebin claiming to have accessed customer details and administrator accounts of Basetools, an online criminal marketplace. The user also claimed to have obtained personal details of the administrator and demanded $50,000 in ransom, or he would release further information and the dox of the administrator. The post threatened to inform law enforcement should the payment not be made. At the time of writing, the Basetools market was ‘under update’ and claimed it would be back in ‘a few days’.”

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