CISA warns of ransomware threat targeting healthcare, medical organizations

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI issued a joint warning Aug. 11 about Zeppelin ransomware, which is being used to target healthcare organizations and medical industries.

Five things to know about Zeppelin:

1. Zeppelin ransomware is a variant of Vega malware and has been used in attacks on critical infrastructure organizations since 2019.
   
   
2. Zeppelin hackers have been known to request ransom payments in Bitcoin, with initial amounts ranging from several thousand dollars to over a million dollars.
   
   
3. Zeppelin hackers threaten to publish or sell stolen data from the entities if the victim refuses to pay the ransom.
   
   
4. The hackers spend one to two weeks inside victims' networks before deploying their ransomware.
   
   
5. Zeppelin hackers gain access to systems by using vulnerabilities in SonicWall firewalls and phishing emails.