Cl0p attacks Westat
Incident Date:
August 15, 2023
Overview
Title
Cl0p attacks Westat
Victim
Westat
Attacker
Clop
Location
First Reported
August 15, 2023
The Cl0p Ransomware Gang Attacks Westat
The Cl0p ransomware gang has attacked Westat. Westat is a research services company founded in 1961 and headquartered in the United States. With a strong reputation in the field, Westat specializes in conducting research studies and providing data collection and analysis services for a diverse range of clients, including government agencies, businesses, and organizations. The company's expertise spans various domains, including social and behavioral research, health research, and education research. They are known for designing and implementing surveys, evaluations, and studies that provide valuable insights into human behavior, societal trends, healthcare practices, education outcomes, and more.
Cl0p's Announcement
Cl0p posted Westat to its data leak site on August 15th but provided no further details.
About Cl0p Ransomware
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.
Recent Ransomware Attacks
The Recent Ransomware Attacks (RRA) site acts as a watchtower, providing you with near real-time ransomware tracking of attacks, groups and their victims. Given threat actors’ overarching, lucrative success so far, ransomware attacks have become the most ubiquitous, and financially and informationally impactful cyber threat to businesses and organizations today.
The site’s data is generated based on hosting choices of real-world threat actors, and a handful of other trackers. While sanitization efforts have been taken, we cannot guarantee 100% accuracy of the data. Attack updates will be made as source data is reported by reputable sources. By viewing, accessing, or using RRA you acknowledge you are doing so at your own risk.