The Cl0p Ransomware Gang's Attack on American Airlines

The Cl0p ransomware gang has attacked American Airlines. American Airlines, founded on April 15, 1926, emerged as a result of the consolidation of several smaller airlines, making it one of the oldest airlines in the world. Over the years, the company has evolved into a major player in the aviation industry, connecting millions of passengers across various destinations globally. Cl0p posted American Airlines to its data leak site on July 18 but provided no further details other than saying: “This company doesn’t care about its customers, it ignored their security!”

Understanding Cl0p's Threat

Cl0p is a major Ransomware-as-service (RaaS) platform first observed in 2019. Cl0p is a dangerous ransomware family because it has advanced anti-analysis capabilities and anti-virtual machine analysis to prevent investigations in an emulated environment like those commonly used by security tools. Cl0p is one of just a handful of threat actors that have developed a Linux version. While Linux has a tiny footprint in desktop computing, it runs ~80% of web servers and a substantial portion of embedded devices used in the healthcare field – and this means that Cl0p is likely actively recruiting new talent to help improve their platform and expand the scope of what and whom they can attack.