Since September 2024, Interlock ransomware actors have impacted a wide range of businesses and critical infrastructure sectors in North America and Europe.
These actors are opportunistic and financially motivated in nature and employ tactics to infiltrate and disrupt the victim’s ability to provide their essential services. Interlock actors leverage a double extortion model, in which they both encrypt and exfiltrate victim data. Ransom notes do not include an initial ransom demand or payment instructions; instead, victims are provided with a unique code and are instructed to contact the ransomware group via a .onion URL through the Tor browser. To date, Interlock actors have been observed encrypting VMs, leaving hosts, workstations, and physical servers unaffected; however, this does not mean they will not expand to these systems in the future.
Read more…
Source: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Cyber Division
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- FBI Warns of Scammers Impersonating the IC3
July 20, 2026
This Public Service Announcement contains updated information about an ongoing fraud scheme where criminal scammers are impersonating FBI personnel facilitating Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) complaints to deceive and revictimize individuals. This scheme combines several exploitation tactics to include the targeting of previous victims, the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated videos to create fictitious or misleading promotional ...
- Hackers breached DHS after alarms were twice ruled ‘false positives’
July 17, 2026
Hackers managed to find their way into the US Department of Homeland Security’s primary information sharing platform, gaining unfettered access to the HSIN network that hosts unclassified information that multiple US agencies and international rely on. The hack allowed the attackers to modify server files, run malicious code and steal credential files while installing backdoors and ...
- Coca-Cola suspended production at its Fairlife dairy after a ransomware attack
July 16, 2026
U.S. beverage maker Coca-Cola said one of its dairy subsidiaries was hacked and that it’s shutting down its operations for the foreseeable future. The multinational giant said in a disclosure with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that its Fairlife dairy company was hit by ransomware and that its production systems are affected. The company said that ...
- Trump administration subpoenas New York Times journalists over new Air Force One reporting
July 11, 2026
The Trump administration has issued subpoenas to several New York Times journalists after the newspaper reported on security concerns with the president’s new plane. The Times said its journalists were subpoenaed on Friday by the US justice department to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan five days later, marking the latest effort by the Trump White ...
- Florida ransomware negotiator convicted for helping ransomware gang extort US companies
July 10, 2026
Florida man Angelo Martino has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for conspiring with hackers to deploy ransomware during his job as a ransomware negotiator for a U.S. cybersecurity company. The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed the sentence on Thursday, noting that the government seized more than $10 million worth of cryptocurrency and assets. Martino ...
- An unnamed US county paid $1M extortion demand to cybercriminals
July 9, 2026
A US county reportedly paid $1 million to Kairos, an extortion gang that claimed to have stolen more than 2 TB of data, but the county never received independently verifiable proof that the stolen files had been deleted – just the criminals’ promise. This means the county’s stolen files may turn up for sale on a ...