Azimut Group declines to pay BlackCat bitcoin extortionists

Italian asset manager Azimut Group, managing assets worth more than $87.2 billion, fell victim to the BlackCat ransomware group. The firm published публичное заявление on the matter.

The incident occurred on July 21. According to Ransomware.live, the hackers claimed to have stolen “more than 500 GB of data,” including allegedly complete financial information of clients, the company’s reports, information on shares and purchases of antiques. Threatening to leak the data, BlackCat demanded an undisclosed ransom.

However, Azimut Group declined the extortionists’ demands. The company acknowledged ‘unauthorized access’ to its systems, but reassured that clients’ personal and financial information is safe and that the attackers did not execute any transactions.

According to a Chainalysis report, in early 2022, the revenues of Bitcoin extortionists fell by 40% from the previous year, as many victims refused to pay the attackers.