The word Conti struck fear in IT departments across the world. It’s a type of ransomware that you hope to never come across. Like most ransomware gangs, the Conti group fell apart. But what’s special about this story is how it fell apart. Because it fell apart in a very public, messy, scandalous way. Featuring investigative journalist Geoff White and cyber threat researcher Alex Holden.
Listen to the BBC podcast The Conti Files! https://www.bbc.com/audio/series/w27vqw1t
Sponsors
This show is brought to you by Doppel. Doppel stops AI attacks with digital risk protection, human risk management, and email security on a unified social engineering defense platform. doppel.com
This show is sponsored by Maze. Maze uses AI agents to triage and remediate cloud vulnerabilities by figuring out what’s actually exploitable, not just what’s theoretically risky. They remove the noise, prioritize vulns that matter, and manage remediation, so your team stops wasting time on meaningless vulns. Visit MazeHQ.com/darknet for more information.
Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker. ThreatLocker is a Zero Trust Platform that gives organizations control over what can run and what users and devices can access. It combines prevention with real time detection and automated response, helping security teams stop unauthorized activity and quickly contain compromised machines. Learn how ThreatLocker can strengthen your defenses at threatlocker.com/Darknet.
Sources
- https://www.bbc.com/audio/series/w27vqw1t
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz9lz8zp04po
- https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/30/politics/ukraine-hack-russian-ransomware-gang
- https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/2022/03/01/conti-ransomware-group-internal-chats-leaked-over-russia-ukraine-conflict/
Attribution
Darknet Diaries is created by Jack Rhysider.
Written and Produced by Sean Powers
Assembled by Tristan Ledger
Episode artwork by odibagas.
Mixing by Proximity Sound.
Theme song created by Breakmaster Cylinder. Theme song available for listen and download at bandcamp. Or listen to it on Spotify.
Transcript
JACK: [Music] There’s a kind of silence that follows a ransomware attack. Your throat gets dry, your chest gets a little heavy, and everything around you goes silent, especially when you see texts like this flash across your screen; ‘All of your files are currently encrypted. If you try to ignore us…’