Ransomware viruses (ransomware) in the UK

Main article: Ransomware ransomware ransomware viruses (ransomware)

2024: Hackers attacked Britain's medical system. All operations in the largest hospitals postponed

At the beginning of June 2024, the largest London hospitals Great Britain had to cancel a number of operations and blood transfusions due to cyber attacks the state medical system. More. here

2023

British companies and government agencies paid ransomware hackers an average of $2.54 million per year. Now payments are growing many times over

The costs of ransomware attacks on Britain's critical national infrastructure have soared. In 2023, companies and government agencies paid attackers an average of $2.54 million. For comparison, a year earlier, the ransom size averaged $62.5 thousand. Thus, the figure increased 41 times, as stated in the Sophos study, the results of which were published in mid-July 2024.

The survey involved 275 organizations. Of these, information about financial costs associated with cyber incidents was disclosed by 86 enterprises. It is said that in different sectors there is a different attitude towards extortionists. In particular, IT and telecommunications companies prefer not to follow the lead of cybercriminals: the average ransom amount is $330 thousand. On the other hand, primary education institutions and federal government organizations transfer the largest amounts to cybercriminals - an average of $6.6 million.

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The cost of rebuilding infrastructure after ransomware attacks has also increased significantly compared to 2022. In some cases, they reached $3 million per incident - a fourfold increase in annual terms was recorded. Only one in five organizations, about 20%, was able to restore IT systems a week or earlier after a hacker invasion. For comparison: in 2022, this figure was 41%, and in 2021 - 50%. At the same time, the share of victims who took more than a month to recover rose to 55% from 36% in 2022.

Thus, the authors of the study note, attacks are becoming more sophisticated and complex, which requires more efforts from IT specialists to completely eliminate the consequences and restore the functioning of services. The average buyback in the first half of 2024 increased to $3.225 million.^[1]

KFC owner in Britain attacked by ransomware virus

In January 2023, the American corporation Yum! Brands, which owns the KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell brands, has been a victim of cybercriminals. The attackers' attack led to the temporary closure of 300 establishments due to the failure of the company's information technology systems and data leakage in Britain for several days. Read more here.

British mail stopped sending parcels abroad due to ransomware virus attack

On January 18, 2023, the Royal Mail of Britain (Royal Mail), an operator with about 15,000 offices across the country, announced that it had been forced to suspend a number of services in connection with the cyber attack. Read more here.

2022

Large British developer will pay millions for data leakage 113 thousand employees

At the end of October 2022, the British construction company Interserve was fined $5 million by the data protection regulator after a group of hackers gained access to the confidential data of 113 thousand employees. Read more here.

Hackers shut down British water company's IT systems and cut off water to residents

The British company South Staffordshire Water, which supplies 330 million liters of drinkable water to 1.6 million customers per day, issued a message on August 16, 2022, in which it confirmed a violation of IT systems due to a cyber attack. Read more here.

Ransomware virus blocked the systems of the British Ministry of Health

On August 11, 2022, it became known that the systems of a large Advanced IT service provider, which provides digital services such as patient registration NHS and 111, were blocked as a result cyber attacks using ransomware. ON The company said a full recovery could take three to four weeks. More. here

British jewelry brand pays hackers $7.5 million in ransom after ransomware attack

In early July 2022, it became known that the British jewelry company Graff Diamonds paid a $7.5 million ransom in bitcoins to a hacker group after a data leak about high-ranking customers of the company. This is stated in the court materials referred to by Bloomberg. Read more here.

2020: Ransomware virus attack on UK cosmetic clinic network Transform Hospital Group

At the end of December 2020, it became known that hackers stole data from a 900 GB British network of beauty clinics and threaten to publish candid photos of patients before and after surgery. The Transform Hospital Group network of clinics confirmed the ransomware virus attack and informed the police about the violation. Read more here.

2019: Ransomware viruses attack British police

At the end of March 2019, British police admitted that they were the victim of a cyber attack. Ransomware viruses hit the police's electronic systems on March 9, 2019: backups were deleted, files and emails turned out to be encrypted and inaccessible.

The decision to delay the public statement was to defend the investigation, which involves the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). The nondisclosure was crucial to the investigation early on, police said, as experts tried to determine the cause of the problems and whether the data had been extracted.

Ransomware viruses attacked British police. Backups deleted, files and e-mail unavailable

Police also engaged BAE Systems to assist with the investigation. The company's experts believe the cyber attack was not targeted and referred to a "wider campaign." At this stage of the investigation, no evidence has emerged that any data has been extracted from police systems, but this possibility cannot be discounted. So far, the risk of data extraction or illegal use is considered low, but the police promise to warn all interested parties when any significant information appears, according to the publication of the Computer Business Reveal of March 22, 2019.

Max Heinemeyer, director of threat search at Darktrace, noted that there has been a resurgence of ransomware viruses since the Norsk Hydro attack. The danger of such viruses is that even attacks by understudied hackers can have devastating consequences. At the same time, experts note that even commercial antiviruses are not always able to detect such cyber attacks.

Therefore, information security specialists advise law enforcement agencies to regularly back up important files and constantly check the possibility of their recovery. Organizations should also train their employees to refrain, if possible, from downloading pirated software or paid software offered "free of charge."^[2]

2018: At Belfast Airport for two days, flight schedules were handwritten on a board due to ransomware virus

The ransomware virus left Bristol Airport without information boards for two days and forced employees to manually write flight schedules on the board almost all weekend. This was reported in mid-September 2018 by ZDNet.

The infection spread on the morning of Friday, September 14. This follows from messages on social networks in which the airport administration warned passengers about the need to arrive in advance, with a margin of time to check in.

Bristol Airport had information boards down for two days due to hacker attack

All Friday, Saturday, as well as Sunday night, airport employees had to write the time of arrival and departure of flights on sheets of A3 paper and on marker boards.

Speaking to local media, airport officials said they did not intend to comply with the demands of the attackers who spread the virus. Instead of paying the ransom, it was decided to disable the system while specialists restore the affected computers. Also, the leadership of the air harbor assured that the viral attack did not lead to flight delays.

By Sunday morning, September 16, all systems affected by the infection were restored, and the information boards were operational again.

We are grateful to the passengers who have been patient while we dealt with this weekend's information board issue. Now the work of all the boards has been restored, and information about arrivals and departures of flights can again be seen on the screens, - wrote the staff of the Bristol airport on Twitter blog, attaching photos of fully functioning displays in confirmation.[3]

Less than a month ago, at the end of August 2018, employees at London Gatwick Airport also had to manually write information about departing and arriving planes. True, at that time the scoreboard was disrupted not by a virus, but by damage to the fiber optic fiber of the Vodafone operator, as a result of which the data stopped entering the displays. Due to a malfunction in the system, some passengers were late for their flights.^[4]

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