Bread over Bitcoin? Hacking group asks for $125,000 ransom to be paid in baguettes

WTF?! What would you alternatively have: $125,000 worthy of crypto aliases crusty French bread? It appears that 1 ransomware group is simply a bigger instrumentality of nan latter, having demanded that costs for nan 40GB of compressed information it stole beryllium paid successful baguettes.

Hellcat, a recently formed ransomware group, claims it is down nan cybersecurity incident being investigated by Schneider Electric. The French multinational power guidance institution has confirmed a developer level was breached.

"Schneider Electric is investigating a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized entree to 1 of our soul task execution search platforms which is hosted wrong an isolated environment," Schneider Electric told BleepingComputer. "Our Global Incident Response squad has been instantly mobilized to respond to nan incident. Schneider Electric's products and services stay unaffected."

As is usually nan lawsuit pinch these incidents, Hellcat says it will delete nan 40GB of compressed information it stole from Schneider Electric if a ransom is paid. Otherwise, it will beryllium made public. The pilfered files incorporate captious data, including projects, issues, and plugins, on pinch complete 400,000 rows of personification data.

Hellcat leaked information connected Monday that nan group claimed belonged to Jordan's Ministry of Education and Tanzania's College of Business Education.

Hellcat is asking for $125,000 to delete nan data. It said that if Schneider publically admits to nan breach, it would trim nan ransom request successful half to $62,500.

However, alternatively than demanding nan money successful crypto, arsenic is nan norm, Hellcat is asking for it to beryllium paid successful baguettes.

With nan mean value of a modular baguette successful France astatine €1.07, aliases astir $1.09, Schneider would request to manus complete astatine slightest 58,715 of these agelong French loaves.

It is presumed, of course, that nan request for nan baguettes was conscionable a joke, sadly. There is a cryptocurrency called Baguette, but its full proviso is only worthy somewhat much than $45,000, truthful Hellcat was improbable to beryllium referring to that obscure token. Moreover, a station connected X shows nan group asking for $125,000 successful Monero, nan crypto that is celebrated successful cybercrimes owed to its enhanced privateness and anonymity.

Last week, it was reported that 2024 is group to beryllium different record-breaking twelvemonth for ransomware attacks, pinch victims handing complete much money than ever before. This is contempt respective incidents of authorities shutting down awesome ransomware operations this year, including nan seizing and disruption of LockBit.

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