Ransomware groups made a strong comeback in November, with the highest number of recorded victims ever, according to Corvus Insurance.
Corvus Threat Intel reported that there were 484 new ransomware victims posted on leak sites in November 2023. This represents a 39.08% increase from October and a 110.43% increase compared with November 2022.
"Palo Alto Networks has observed threat activity exploiting an unauthenticated remote command execution vulnerability against a limited number of firewall...
Ransomware victims have increased year after year for the past eleven months. The number of victims has been consistently above 300 for the past nine months. This is the third time this year that this record has been broken.
In November, the record-breaking event was not caused by Clop’s MOVEit supply chain attack, unlike the previous two records in 2023.
A CitrixBleed-Induced LockBit’s Activity Peak:
LockBit’s activity increased in November, which contributed to the peak in cyber attacks. November had the third-highest number of victims in 2023, with 121 listed, following a relatively calm period in the Fall.
If the first two peaks were due to affiliates returning to work after a winter or a summer break, Corvus threat intelligence analysts estimated that the November increase could be attributed to the CitrixBleed vulnerability, “which has reportedly become a new staple for the group.”
Based on historical seasonal data, the Corvus Threat Intel team projected that December’s ransomware leak site victims will surpass those in December 2022 but won’t reach the levels seen in November.
“We expect a decrease in January as the humans behind ransomware attacks take some time off,” the researchers added.
Corvus noticed that the law enforcement’s takedown of the QakBot malware in August affected ransomware groups. However, a new increase in victim listings indicates that the impact was not long-lasting. “the ransomware ecosystem has successfully pivoted away from QBot.”