Ransomware Gangs’ Merciless Attacks Bleed Small Companies Dry

The black-and-white message flickering across computer screens sparked panic at Knights of Old, a 158-year-old UK delivery company: “If you’re reading this, it means the internal infrastructure of your company is fully or partially dead.”

Knights’ network for managing trucks was down. So was the system for booking payments. From 2,000 miles away, a criminal, Russia-linked hacking gang known as Akira had sabotaged the computers at Knights of Old and two related trucking companies. To force negotiations, the crooks in June 2023 had deployed malicious software that encrypted Knights’ files and then threatened to publish online its confidential internal data. Paying a ransom would get the company a decryption key that could be used to unlock the compromised computers and servers, Akira said.