10 Major Cyberattacks And Data Breaches In 2024 (So Far)
July 1, 2024 – Published on CRN
If the pace of major cyberattacks during the first half of 2024 has seemed to be nonstop, that’s probably because it has been: The first six months of the year have seen organizations fall prey to a series of ransomware attacks as well as data breaches focused on data theft and extortion.
For instance, the February ransomware attack against UnitedHealth-owned prescription processor Change Healthcare caused massive disruption in the U.S. health care system for weeks — preventing many pharmacies and hospitals from processing claims and receiving payments. Then in May, the Ascension health system was struck by a ransomware attack that forced it to divert emergency care from some of its hospitals.
The attacks have raised questions about whether threat actors are intentionally targeting companies whose patients and customers would be severely affected by the disruptions, in order to put increased pressure on the organizations for paying a ransom. If so, the tactic would seem to have been working, since UnitedHealth paid a $22 million ransom to a Russian-speaking cybercrime group that perpetrated the Change Healthcare attack.
It’s not certain that this has been the attackers’ strategy, however, said Mark Lance, vice president for DFIR and threat intelligence at GuidePoint Security, No. 39 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500 for 2024.
“Do I think that it was indirect or there was intent to have an impact all these kinds of downstream providers? You never know,” Lance said. When it comes to ransomware groups, “a lot of times, they might not even recognize the level of impact indirectly [an attack] is going to have on downstream providers or services.”
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