Twitter or Facebook are not the only ones who have some of their employees to thank. As reported by Wall Street Journal, hacker groups are also choosing to scale back. In the fall of 2022, the Conti group, specialized in ransomware, parted ways with 45 call center operators, according to a cybersecurity specialist cited by the financial media.
According to the same source, these operators had been recruited to communicate with victims by phone as part of tech support scams. In this context, victims see fake error messages appear on their computer and are invited to call a phone number. By claiming remote access to the machine, criminals install ransomware.
profitability problem
Widely used by hackers in recent years, these ransomware encrypts all data on an infected machine, before demanding a ransom from the victim to get it back. An especially dangerous method when it affects sensitive infrastructures such as hospitals.
Faced with the explosion of these attacks, companies have been able to change their reflexes to invest more in cybersecurity, particularly at the request of their insurers. With the key to significant drops in intrusions, but also in the amounts collected by hackers, as well as more arrests. At Conti, the dismissal of the 45 affected operators was due to the lack of profitability of the call center.
as you remember Wall Street JournalHowever, this decline could only be temporary. Above all, hackers could diversify their attack methods, for example by focusing more on phishing via email, SMS or phone.
Source: BFM TV
