Black Basta’s Slowdown Coincides with BlackLock’s Growth

The activity level of ransomware groups with “black” in their name has varied greatly over the early months of the new year. Despite the significant increase in attacks caused by the BlackLock ransomware group, the long-established Black Basta ransomware group appears to be about to break up, although it is still posing a persistent cybersecurity threat even so. 

Even though BlackLock was first identified as a ransomware-as-a-service operation in March 2024, the cyber-criminals have been actively targeting multiple platforms in the past few months, including Windows, VMware ESXi, and Linux systems, according to a report by cybersecurity firm ReliaQuest. According to a report by ReliaQuest, BlackLock, also known as El Dorado or Eldorado, utilizes a double-extortion strategy, which involves exfiltration of sensitive data from a victim before the encryption of their computer systems. 

With this approach, threat actors can demand a ransom in addition to the decryption of compromised files to obtain a promise that they will not reveal the stolen data once they have decrypted it. As reported by ReliaQuest, BlackLock has also reported a substantial increase in its activities over the last three months, with its data leak site registering fourteen times as many victims as it did in the previous three months of 2024.
In light of this sharp increase, it is evident that BlackLock is becoming a greater threat to organizations, a

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