Bank of Costa Rica (BCR) has been receiving threats from the threat actors behind Maze ransomware who have stolen credit card details from the bank, the ransomware gang started publishing the encrypted financial details this week.
The Banco de Costa Rica is one of the strongest state-owned commercial banks operated in Costa Rica, starting from humble origins of mainly being a private commercial bank, it expanded to become a currency issuer and one of the most renowned baking firms in Central America contributing largely in the financial development of the nation.
The hacker group behind the data leak have demanded a ransom from Banco de Costa Rica at various occasions, however, to their dismay they observed a lack of seriousness in the way the bank dealt with these previous leaks and it served as a primary reason that motivated the latest data leak, according to an interview with Maze ransomware operators.
As per the claims made by the attackers, Banco de Costa Rica's network remained insecure till February 2020; it was in August 2019 when they first compromised the bank's network and the second attempt was made in the month of February 2020 to see how the security has been improvised – if at all so.
The 2GB of data published by the Maze ransomware attackers on their leak site contains the details of at least 50 Mastercards and Visa credit cards or debit cards, a few being listed more than once.
As per the statements given by Brett Callow, a threat analyst with Emsisoft to ISMG, "Like other groups, Maze now weaponizes the data it steals,"
"The information is no longer simply published online; it's used to harm companies' reputations and attack their business partners and customers."
"The Maze group is a for-profit criminal enterprise who are out to make a buck," Callow says. "The credit card information has been posted for one of two reasons: Either to pressure BCR into paying and/or to demonstrate the consequences of non-compliance to their future victims," Callow further told.
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