Pierluigi Paganini
August 06, 2026
A U.S. court sentenced Ransom Cartel founder Maksim Silnikau to 16 years for running a ransomware-as-a-service operation. Maksim Silnikau (aka “J.P. Morgan,” “lansky,” and “xxx,”) built a ransomware business the way a franchise owner builds a chain: he never had to touch most of the crime scenes himself. This week, a federal judge in Virginia […]
Pierluigi Paganini
August 03, 2026
River Bank says hackers deleted data stolen in its June ransomware attack, though the investigation into the incident is still ongoing. River Financial Corporation, the parent company of River Bank & Trust, says hackers deleted data stolen during a ransomware attack that hit parts of its server environment in June. The breach began on June […]
Pierluigi Paganini
July 27, 2026
A new report links 148 ransomware attacks to Italian organizations in H1 2026, with manufacturing the most targeted sector. Six months, 148 confirmed ransomware claims against Italian targets, and one sector taking the brunt of it. That’s the headline number from a new semi-annual tracker compiled by ransomNews under its RedACT project, which pulls together […]
Pierluigi Paganini
July 21, 2026
Qilin ransomware exploits the PAN-OS GlobalProtect flaw CVE-2026-0257 to gain unauthorized VPN access to unpatched networks. Arctic Wolf researchers warn that the Qilin ransomware gang is exploiting the critical PAN-OS GlobalProtect vulnerability CVE-2026-0257 to compromise corporate networks. CVE-2026-0257 is a PAN-OS authentication bypass vulnerability affecting GlobalProtect portals and gateways. Palo Alto Networks addressed the vulnerability on May […]
Pierluigi Paganini
July 14, 2026
U.S. sanctions hit VPN provider 1VPNS and a cryptor seller for enabling ransomware gangs behind billions in losses to critical infrastructure. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned two individuals and one entity on July 13 for supplying tools and infrastructure to ransomware groups that have caused billions of dollars in losses to […]
Pierluigi Paganini
July 10, 2026
Ransomware remains above 1,400 attacks yearly since 2023. Qilin leads in 2026, while the U.S. remains the main target. Ransomnews has independently confirmed 9,291 ransomware attacks worldwide between January 2018 and July 2026, tracking incidents only when verified through victim disclosures, regulatory filings, official statements, or credible press reporting. Leak-site listings alone don’t qualify, operators […]
Pierluigi Paganini
July 03, 2026
Sysdig reports an AI agent ran a full ransomware attack end-to-end, exploiting flaws, stealing creds, moving laterally, and encrypting data without humans. Sysdig’s Threat Research Team has documented what it assesses to be the first ransomware operation driven end-to-end by a large language model. The operator, which Sysdig calls JADEPUFFER, broke into a server, harvested […]
Pierluigi Paganini
June 30, 2026
Police arrested the alleged admin of XSS.is, a major cybercrime forum whose trusted escrow service helped power the underground economy. On 22 July 2025, French and Ukrainian police arrested a 38-year-old man in Kyiv and shut down XSS.is, the most influential Russian-language cybercrime forum of the past decade. Europol, which coordinated the operation under the […]
Pierluigi Paganini
June 25, 2026
Mistic is a stealthy backdoor used by KongTuke-linked actors to keep long-term access in ransomware-targeted networks. Mistic is the kind of backdoor that tells you the operator wants time, not noise. Symantec security researchers say it has shown up in financially motivated attacks against insurance, education, IT, and professional services firms, and they link it […]
Pierluigi Paganini
June 20, 2026
The Gentlemen equips affiliates with a centralized EDR-killer suite, rapidly weaponizing BYOVD exploits to disable security tools before ransomware attacks. ESET published a detailed breakdown of The Gentlemen‘s technical infrastructure on June 18, the result of months of incident-level investigation corroborated by the group’s own internal data leak from May 2026. Since emerging in late […]
