The Cl0p Ransomware Gang Attacks Hornbeck Offshore

The Cl0p ransomware gang has attacked Hornbeck Offshore. Hornbeck Offshore Services, Inc., commonly known as Hornbeck Offshore, is an American company specializing in providing marine transportation services to the offshore oil and gas industry. The company is based in Covington, Louisiana. Cl0p posted Hornbeck Offshore to its data leak site on June 30th but provided no further details.

Cl0p: A Major Ransomware-as-Service Platform

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.