The Bank of Zambia made it clear that they would not provide any ransom despite the threats posed by the Hive operation. After suffering a ransomware attack courtesy of the earlier-mentioned group, the bank said they were not concerned; instead, they responded to the attack by sending an explicit photograph to the threat actors.
The affected bank then conducted a press release, informing their members that they were experiencing partial disruption in their IT applications last month.
According to the bank, the alleged disruption affected some firm systems such as the Bureau of De Change Monitoring and the Bank Website. The bank’s representative then advised everyone that their IT team had fully recovered and restored these systems.
An explicit response is what the threat actors received from the Bank of Zambia.
A cybersecurity group discovered that the bank experienced a ransomware attack after the Hive group infected their systems. The ransomware group might have encrypted the bank’s Network Attached Storage device.
The bank refused to respond to Hive’s ransom requests to recover their encrypted data. Instead, they responded by trolling the hackers with vulgar messages, intending to stop them from attacking bank networks.
A separate researcher posted a poll on whether the bank sent the reply or was sent by the hackers. Surprisingly enough, most poll respondents believed that the victim is the sender of the explicit message.
The bank’s response to the threat posed by the Hive group may not be a proper method that can apply to all organisations. However, everyone should praise them for making it clear that these hackers do not easily threaten them.
The grit shown by the Bank of Zambia against the threat actors showed everyone that these hackers are not in control all the time. They have also set an example on how to end ransomware threats. By not paying the ransom and recovering the backups over time, everyone can surely discourage these ransomware operations.
