{"id":537632,"date":"2021-05-23T11:36:07","date_gmt":"2021-05-23T15:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=537632"},"modified":"2021-05-23T11:36:09","modified_gmt":"2021-05-23T15:36:09","slug":"insurance-giant-reportedly-pays-hackers-40-million-ransom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/insurance-giant-reportedly-pays-hackers-40-million-ransom\/","title":{"rendered":"Insurance Giant Reportedly Pays Hackers $40 Million Ransom"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Finsurance-giant-reportedly-pays-hackers-40-million-ransom%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=537632&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/money-2.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>CNA Financial, one of the largest insurance companies in the U.S., reportedly paid more than $40 million in ransom to end an attack by hackers in March.<\/p>\n<p>Hackers locked the Chicago-based company out of its network for about two weeks, Bloomberg News <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2021-05-20\/cna-financial-paid-40-million-in-ransom-after-march-cyberattack\">reported<\/a>. That\u2019s when the company paid them off, \u201caccording to two people familiar with the attack who asked not to be named because they weren\u2019t authorized to discuss the matter publicly,\u201d Bloomberg reported.<\/p>\n<p>But a CNA spokesman would only confirm that the cyberattack occurred, refusing to say whether a ransom was paid.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cCNA is not commenting on the ransom,\u201d spokeswoman Cara McCall said. \u201cCNA followed all laws, regulations, and published guidance, including OFAC\u2019s 2020 ransomware guidance, in its handling of this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>McCall said CNA passed along information about the attack and the hackers to the FBI and the Treasury Department\u2019s Office of Foreign Assets Control. CNA also said&nbsp;it believed the hackers were a group called Phoenix, according to Bloomberg.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe CNA hackers used malware called Phoenix Locker, a variant of ransomware dubbed \u2018Hades.\u2019 Hades was created by a Russian cybercrime syndicate known as Evil Corp., according to cybersecurity experts,\u201d Bloomberg reported. \u201cEvil Corp. was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019. However, attributing attacks can be difficult because hacking groups can share code or sell malware to one another.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this month, hackers caused a weeklong shutdown of a major U.S. gasoline pipeline. On May 7 the Colonial Pipeline was hit with a cyberattack that forced the closure of the 5,500-mile pipeline, which moves more than 100 million gallons of fuel from Texas to New Jersey every day \u2014 nearly 50% of the fuel consumed on the East Coast.<\/p>\n<p>And hackers have reportedly hit nearly 50 other targets, pulling in more than $90 million in ransoms.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cDarkSide hackers that closed the Colonial Pipeline have bagged more than $90 million in Bitcoin ransom payments from 47 victims and have infected at least 99 companies in the last year,\u201d the Daily Mail <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-9592971\/90M-paid-ransoms-99-firms-targeted-DarkSide-closed-Colonial-Pipeline.html\">reported<\/a>. \u201cBlockchain analytics firm&nbsp;Elliptic&nbsp;said DarkSide\u2019s Bitcoin wallet received millions of dollars worth of ransom payments in the nine months between October last year and last week when the wallet shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The targets included fashion label Guess and car firm Toshiba, although it was not clear if they paid ransoms. About half of the targets paid ransoms, with the average payment being around $1.9 million, Elliptic said.<\/p>\n<p>Dark web intelligence firm DarkTracer identified 99 organizations that were infected with Darkside ransomware.<\/p>\n<p>Colonial reportedly paid nearly $5 million in ransom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJoseph Blount, CEO of Colonial Pipeline Co., told The Wall Street Journal that he authorized the ransom payment of $4.4 million because executives were unsure how badly the cyberattack had breached its systems or how long it would take to bring the pipeline back,\u201d The Wall Street Journal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/colonial-pipeline-ceo-tells-why-he-paid-hackers-a-4-4-million-ransom-11621435636\">reported<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\">member<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CNA Financial, one of the largest insurance companies in the U.S., reportedly paid more than $40 million in ransom to end an attack by hackers in March.Hackers locked the Chicago-based &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2312733,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/money-2.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"Insurance Giant Reportedly Pays Hackers $40 Million Ransom","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-537632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/money-2.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"Insurance Giant Reportedly Pays Hackers $40 Million Ransom","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2312733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}