The American Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN), which operates more than ten hospitals in various cities in Pennsylvania, refused to pay ransom money to extortionists from the ALPHV / BlackCat group.

The ALPHV / BlackCat group is known in the cyber community for developing the world’s first ransomware program in the Rust programming language. For the first time, these cybercriminals were noticed in 2021. Like many other groups, ALPHV / BlackCat operates on a ransomware-as-a-service (Ransomware-as-a-Service) model.RaaS) by selling malware subscriptions to criminals.

On February 6, the aforementioned LVHN detected unauthorized activity on its IT systems. The organization immediately notified law enforcement agencies and cybersecurity firms with which it cooperates. The investigation revealed that a computer system was hacked, which doctors used to view images of patients, information about the treatment of radiation oncology and other confidential data.

LVHN said it refused to pay the ransom demanded by the hackers, continuing trend of recent years . Most likely, the company did the right thing. Cybersecurity experts advise against paying a ransom to hackers, as there is no guarantee that the attackers will decrypt the data. Also, the payment of a ransom may attract unwanted attention from other syndicates, as the criminals begin to see the victim as solvent.

FBI thinks that the individuals who laundered money for ALPHV/BlackCat are connected to the ransomware groups Darkside and Blackmatter. This indicates that ALPHV/BlackCat has a well established network of agents in the RaaS business.

Recently, ALPHV/BlackCat is one of the most active ransomware gangs. According to cybersecurity analysts, the group was responsible for approximately 12% of all cyber attacks in 2022.