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  The recovery cost from the impact of a ransomware attack tripled in the last year in India -- up from $1.1 million (over Rs 8 crore) in 2020 to $3.38 million (more than Rs 24.5 crore) in 2021 to date -- as the country topped the list of 30 countries worldwide for ransomware attacks, a new report said on Tuesday. Ransomware Cyber Attacks The average ransom payment in India was $76,619 (over Rs 55 lakh). However, paying up often doesn't pay off as Indian organizations that paid the ransom got back, on average, 75 per cent of their data and only 4 per cent got all their data back, according to 'The State of Ransomware 2021' report by global cybersecurity leader Sophos. The findings showed that 67 per cent of Indian organizations whose data was encrypted paid a ransom to get back their data -- a slight increase on the previous year when 66 per cent paid a ransom. Click Here

  The state-backed Russian cyber spies behind the SolarWinds hacking campaign launched a targeted spear-phishing assault on US and foreign government agencies and think tanks this week using an email marketing account of the US Agency for International Development, Microsoft said. The effort targeted about 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organisations, at least a quarter of them involved in international development, humanitarian and human rights work, Microsoft Vice President Tom Burt said in a blog post late Thursday. It did not say what portion of the attempts may have led to successful intrusions. The cybersecurity firm Volexity, which also tracked the campaign but has less visibility into email systems than Microsoft, said in a post that relatively low detection rates of the phishing emails suggest the attacker was likely having some success in breaching targets. Read More

  Cyber-security researchers have identified a stash of 167 counterfeit Android and iOS apps being used by hackers to steal money from people who believe they have installed a financial trading, banking or cryptocurrency app from a trusted organisation. Researchers at cyber-security firm Sophos investigated the fake apps and found that many were very similar. The attackers targeted users through dating sites and lured victims into installing money-stealing apps disguised as popular brands. Some apps included an embedded customer support "chat" option. When researchers tried to communicate with the support teams using the chat, the replies they received used near-identical language. The researchers also uncovered a single server loaded with 167 fake trading and cryptocurrency apps. Read More