Explore how ransomware attacks work, how they infiltrate networks, and what steps individuals and organizations can take to prevent, detect, and recover from ransomware incidents. Articles cover recent ransomware variants, encryption tactics, backup strategies, and incident response planning.
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When the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack shut down fuel distribution across the U.S. East Coast in May 2021, millions of people suddenly needed to understand words like "ransomware," "threat actor," and "critical infrastructure." But most glossaries online read like they were written by
The Vocabulary Gap That Costs Millions In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a social engineering attack that started with a phone call to the help desk. The attacker didn't exploit a software flaw. They exploited a human who didn't fully understand what
A Single Click Cost MGM Resorts $100 Million In September 2023, a threat actor called Scattered Spider used social engineering to trick an MGM Resorts help desk employee into resetting credentials. Within hours, they deployed malware across MGM's network — crippling hotel check-ins, slot machines, and digital room keys
The Phishing Headlines Keep Getting Worse In January 2024, a finance worker at engineering firm Arup wired $25 million to threat actors after a deepfake video call that impersonated the company's CFO. That single incident captures everything terrifying about the current phishing news cycle: attacks are smarter, faster,
In September 2023, MGM Resorts watched its slot machines go dark, hotel room keys stop working, and reservation systems crash — all because a threat actor social-engineered the company's help desk with a ten-minute phone call. The attackers deployed ransomware that cost MGM an estimated $100 million in lost
In September 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a social engineering phone call — just one phone call — gave threat actors the foothold they needed to deploy ransomware across the company's entire infrastructure. Slot machines went dark. Hotel key cards stopped working. Reservation systems collapsed. All
In September 2023, MGM Resorts International watched helplessly as a single social engineering phone call spiraled into a cyberattack that cost the company over $100 million. Slot machines went dark. Hotel room keys stopped working. Reservations collapsed. And it all started because a threat actor called the help desk and
In December 2020, security firm FireEye discovered that SolarWinds — a company most people had never heard of — had been compromised by a threat actor who injected malicious code into a routine software update. That single update shipped to roughly 18,000 organizations, including the U.S. Treasury, the Department of
In January 2023, the FBI and international law enforcement took down the Hive ransomware group's dark web infrastructure, seizing servers that had processed over $100 million in ransom payments from hospitals, school districts, and financial firms. That operation gave the public a rare, concrete look at what the
In 2022, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 800,000 complaints totaling losses exceeding $10.3 billion — a 49% increase over 2021. When I talk to the people behind those numbers, a pattern emerges fast: they didn't understand what was happening to them because
