September 21, 2021

A BlackMatter Ransomware group has made a ransom demand of 5.9 million dollars to the US farmer cooperative NEW Cooperative, under the risk of leaking the cooperative’s stolen data.

The ransomware group also noted that the ransom could rise to 11.8 million dollars if it is not paid in five days.

New Cooperative confirmed the attack to Bleeping Computer: “NEW Cooperative recently identified a cybersecurity incident that is impacting some of our company’s devices and systems. Out of an abundance of caution, we have proactively taken our systems offline to contain the threat, and we can confirm it has been successfully contained. We also quickly notified law enforcement and are working closely with data security experts to investigate and remediate the situation.”

Several clues have led researchers to suspect that BlackMatter is a renamed version of DarkSide, a ransomware group known for its attack against Colonial pipeline.

For more information, read the original story in Bleeping Computer.