Quote:Ransomware group Avaddon has decided to shutter its criminal enterprise after landing in the crosshairs of law-enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Australia.
 
Avaddon, a prolific ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) provider, released its decryption keys to BleepingComputer — 2,934 in total — with each key belonging to an individual victim. Law enforcement said the average ransom demanded by the group was about $40,000, meaning they quit and just walked away from millions.
 
Last month, the Australian Cyber Security Centre in cooperation with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation released an alert about Avaddon. The group spent the days following the alert collecting as many payments as possible before releasing the keys, BleepingComputer reported.
 
The alert outlined Avaddon’s brutal tactics, including double extortion and even a twist on triple extortion with threats of denial of service (DDoS) attacks against their victims until the ransom was paid.  The agency added Avaddon initiated its ransomware reign of terror with a sprawling spam campaign in February 2019, and over the years evolved into a sophisticated RaaS operation.
 
Avaddon launched one of these punitive DDoS attacks against Australian-based telecom provider Schepisi Communication when it refused to pay up, according to Malwarebytes Labs. It added that the group was also behind attacks on two U.S. healthcare providers: A medical center and a healthcare center for seniors.
 
Avaddon was believed to be operating within the Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet-bloc countries), meaning the group’s shutdown just happens to coincide with President Biden’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, where officials said ransomware and cybersecurity will be discussed.