India’s National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) has allegedly become the latest victim of the notorious Medusa ransomware group. The hacker group added the name of the Chennai-based institute to their victim list.
According to a post on Medusa ransomware’s blog, the group managed to infiltrate NIOT’s systems and encrypt critical data, including plans, CAD drawings, and other sensitive information.
While there is no confirmation whether NIOT has suffered a cyberattack, the organization’s official website was down, and phones were inaccessible at the time of writing.
The Cyber Express has reached out to the officials at NIOT regarding the incident but is yet to receive a response from them. However, a source confirmed that the website server was down.
The Medusa ransomware group has been active since 2019 and is known to target organizations in various sectors, including healthcare, finance, and government.
India’s National Institute of Ocean Technology
NIOT is a premier research institution in India dedicated to developing sustainable ocean exploration and conservation technologies.
The organization’s work is vital for understanding and protecting the ocean ecosystem and supporting the country’s economic growth through offshore activities such as fishing, oil and gas exploration, and shipping.
NIOT cyber attack: What methods could be employed by Medusa ransomware?
While there is no confirmation regarding the NIOT cyber attack, however, the inaccessibility of the website comes right at the time the Medusa ransomware group claimed the organization as its victim.
In regular cases, we can get this error if the user’s web browser or device cannot establish a connection with the website’s server. In some cases, a cyberattack, such as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, can overwhelm a website’s server with traffic, causing the website to become unavailable to users.
The Medusa ransomware group is just one of many active ransomware groups worldwide, and their attacks have become increasingly sophisticated.
They use tactics such as phishing emails, social engineering, and exploiting software vulnerabilities to access their victims’ systems. The group has been known to demand large sums of money in exchange for the decryption key, with some victims paying millions to regain access to their data.
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