FOG Ransomware Spread by Cybercriminals Claiming Ties to DOGE


During trend Micro researchers monitoring of the ransomware threat landscape, they discovered samples with infection chain characteristics and payloads that can be attributed to FOG ransomware.

A total of nine samples were uploaded to VirusTotal between March 27 and April 2, which the researchers recently discovered were multiple ransomware binaries with .flocked extension and readme.txt notes. Trend Micro observed that these samples initially dropped a note containing key names related to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative of the current US administration that has been making headlines, recently about a member who allegedly assisted a cybercrime group involved in data theft and cyberstalking an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The note also contains instructions to spread the ransomware payload to other computers by pasting the provided code in the note.

Read more…
Source: Trend Micro


Sign up for our Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.


Related:

  • Revolut confirms customer data breach through fake government requests

    September 12, 2026

    British fintech Revolut confirmed that it disclosed sensitive customer information to an unauthorized third party after receiving fraudulent requests sent from a legitimate government agency email domain. The exposed data included customers’ identity and contact details, including their birth date, postal and email addresses, and phone numbers, as well as copies of their identity documents including ...

  • Crypto customers targeted by scammers after email marketing provider breach

    September 11, 2026

    An attacker breached an email marketing platform and launched targeted attacks against the newsletter subscribers of some of its customers, especially those working in cryptocurrency and adjacent fields. The incident was a supply-chain phishing campaign carried out through Brevo, an email marketing provider used by several cryptocurrency companies and other firms. Brevo initially said an attacker had ...

  • The modern bank heist is already under way

    September 11, 2026

    The image of the bank robber is hopelessly outdated. Today’s heist does not begin with a getaway car outside a branch. It begins quietly, with an adversary establishing persistence inside a financial institution’s network and studying how the organisation responds, says Tom Kellermann, VP of AI Security and Threat Research at Trend AI. The objective is no longer ...

  • A new Android attack combines malware and ransomware in a cocktail of cybercrime

    September 11, 2026

    Unique malware variant spotted targeting Android users. When threat actors target people’s devices, they usually infect it with one of many malware strains: an infostealer, a remote access trojan, a backdoor, or a ransomware encryptor. Rarely do we see all of these functionalities merged into a single entity, and even rarer – to have it target Android ...

  • ShinyHunters expose 6.4M in attack on medical supplier McKesson

    September 10, 2026

    McKesson’s cyberattack last month affected roughly 6.4 million individuals, according to Have I Been Pwned (HIBP). The breach notification service added data leaked by serial extortionists ShinyHunters, revealing the scale of the attack for the first time. ShinyHunters initially claimed to have stolen 284 million documents from the medical and pharmaceutical supply company in August, although HIBP ...

  • Protecting organizations from AI-assisted executive impersonation and invoice fraud

    September 10, 2026

    Threat actors are increasingly improving their tactics to make suspicious emails look like legitimate email notifications to potential victims, deploying techniques that impersonate internally sent emails from executive team members. While this technique is not new, the adoption of AI has enabled threat actors to improve their campaign templates and construct emails tailored to their ...