Dark Angel ransomware gang gets millions

Thisprobably goes in the “I can’t believe this” department.

A Fortune 50 company paid a record-breaking $75 million ransom payment to the Dark Angels ransomware gang, according to a report by Zscaler ThreatLabz.

The articl continues:

“In early 2024, ThreatLabz uncovered a victim who paid Dark Angels $75 million, higher than any publicly known amount— an achievement that’s bound to attract the interest of other attackers looking to replicate such success by adopting their key tactics (which we describe below),” reads the 2024 Zscaler Ransomware Report.

This record-breaking payment was further confirmed by crypto intelligence company Chainalysis, who tweeted about it on X.

They say:

Dark Angels is a ransomware operation launched in May 2022 when it began targeting companies worldwide.

This makes them opportunistic, they try to get big paydays, but yet this is the largest ransomware payment we’ve ever seen.

In this attack, Dark Angels claimed to have stolen 27 TB of corporate data and demanded a $51 million ransom payment.

Further down, it says:

Zscaler ThreatLabz says that Dark Angels utilizes the “Big Game Hunting” strategy, which is to target only a few high-value companies in the hopes of massive payouts rather than many companies at once for numerous but smaller ransom payments.

Chainalysis says that big game hunting is now becoming a trend.

I heard about this, and the article is titled Dark Angels ransomware receives record-breaking $75 million ransom so give it a look, and learn.

It didn’t mention who the company was that paid, so I guess we’ll see.