The Lawfare Podcast: Charl van der Walt on Cyber Extortion

Since at least May 27, the CL0P ransomware gang has been exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability to exfiltrate data from financial services organizations, energy corporations, government agencies and even universities. The group appears to be changing tactics - while it was previously known for its use of the ‘double extortion’ tactic of stealing and encrypting victim data, it seems to now be relying mostly on data exfiltration instead.

To discuss the latest changes in the ransomware ecosystem, Eugenia Lostri, Lawfare’s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law sat down with Charl van der Walt, Head of Security Research at Orange Cyberdefense. Charl is one of the authors of a report analyzing recent cyber extortion activity. They talked about the ransomware-as-a-service ecosystem, the impact the Russian invasion of Ukraine had on ransomware activity in the past year, and what law enforcement is doing to disrupt cybercriminal networks.