Ransomware gangs began 2024 slowly, with fewer attacks in various important sectors in January. Ransomware gangs posted fewer victims in January compared to the previous month, with a total of 242 victims. This is the lowest number of victims since February 2023.
"Palo Alto Networks has observed threat activity exploiting an unauthenticated remote command execution vulnerability against a limited number of firewall...
Attacks on healthcare providers, state and local governments, and schools decreased in January. They all experienced the lowest number of monthly attacks since at least February 2023, according to data collected by Recorded Future from various sources like extortion sites, government agencies, news reports, and hacking forums.
Recent law enforcement actions against ransomware actors and cybercriminals may have temporarily reduced the number of attacks. For instance, in late August, the FBI took down the Qakbot ransomware gang’s infrastructure and removed ransomware from infected devices.
The Ragnar Locker ransomware site was taken down by law enforcement at the end of 2023. Ukrainian hackers also wiped the servers of the Trigona ransomware gang, which was connected to Russia.