Tag: cybercrime recruitment
New ransomware threat emerges in 2025
A new and unusually dangerous and sophisticated gang of cybercriminals, named BlackLock, has emerged as a major ransomware threat in 2025. Cybersecurity company Reliaquest observed a staggering 1,425 percent increase in the gang’s activities in the last quarter of 2024. Its ransomware is built to target Windows, VMWare ESXi, and Linux environments and is designed as a double-extortion attack, which involves not only locking the target organization’s critical data by encrypting it, but also by identifying sensitive information and threatening to expose it. “BlackLock’s rise has been both swift and strategic, targeting organizations across a wide range of sectors and geographies,” reports Reliaquest.