The BlackCat/ALPHV Ransomware Gang's Attack on Davidoff, Hutcher & Citron

The BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware gang has attacked Davidoff, Hutcher & Citron. Davidoff Hutcher & Citron is a New York law firm, founded in 1975. It is a mid-sized organization that focuses on commercial litigation, transactional law, government relations, and public affairs. Davidoff Hutcher & Citron has five offices across the eastern United States.

BlackCat/ALPHV posted Davidoff Hutcher & Citron to its data leak site on August 21st but provided no further details. First observed in late 2021, BlackCat/ALPHV is a RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Service) that employs a well-developed RaaS platform that encrypts by way of an AES algorithm. The code is highly customizable and includes JSON configurations for affiliate customization.

BlackCat/ALPHV has the ability to disable security tools and evade analysis and is probably the most advanced ransomware family at present capable of employing different encryption routines, advanced self-propagation, and hinders hypervisors to for obfuscations and anti-analysis. BlackCat/ALPHV can impact systems running Windows, VMWare ESXi and Linux (including Debian, ReadyNAS, Ubuntu, and Synology distributions).

Rise in Activity and Ransom Demands

BlackCat/ALPHV became one of the more active RaaS platforms over the course of 2022, and attack volumes in Q1 2023 continued to increase although it was overtaken by Cl0p in number of attacks in Q1 2023. BlackCat/ALPHV typically demands ransoms in the $400,000 to $3 million range but has exceeded $5 million.