Medusa attacks Order of Nurses of Quebec (OIIQ)
Incident Date:
April 23, 2024
Overview
Title
Medusa attacks Order of Nurses of Quebec (OIIQ)
Victim
Order of Nurses of Quebec (OIIQ)
Attacker
Medusa
Location
First Reported
April 23, 2024
The Quebec Order of Nurses (OIIQ) Data Breach
Overview
The Quebec Order of Nurses (OIIQ) has reportedly been compromised by the Medusa ransomware group. The group allegedly exfiltrated 111.68 GB of data, including contacts, sensitive documents, invoices, financial data, and email correspondence. A sample of the data has been published, and a ransom demand has been set at $200,000 with a deadline of 1 May.
Background
OIIQ is a government nonprofit organization, and the largest professional order in Quebec, with nearly 72,000 members. Anyone wishing to work as a nurse in Quebec must be a member of the OIIQ.
Medusa Ransomware Group
Medusa is a RaaS that made its debut in the summer of 2021 and has evolved to be one of the more active RaaS platforms. Attack volumes were inconsistent in the first half of 2023, with a resurgence of attack activity in the last half of 2023. The attackers restart infected machines in safe mode to avoid detection by security software, as well as prevent recovery by deleting local backups, disabling startup recovery options, and deleting VSS Shadow Copies to thwart encryption rollback.
Medusa ramped up attacks in the latter part of 2022 and has been one of the more active groups in the first quarter of 2023 but appears to have waned somewhat in the second quarter. Medusa typically demands ransoms in the millions of dollars, which can vary depending on the target organization’s ability to pay.
Modus Operandi
The Medusa RaaS operation (not to be confused with the operators of the earlier MedusaLocker ransomware) typically compromises victim networks through malicious email attachments (macros), torrent websites, or malicious ad libraries. Medusa can terminate over 280 Windows services and processes without command line arguments (there may be a Linux version as well, but it is unclear at this time.)
Medusa targets multiple industry verticals, especially healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, as well as public sector organizations. Medusa also employs a double extortion scheme where some data is exfiltrated prior to encryption. Still, they are not as generous with their affiliate attackers, only offering as much as 60% of the ransom if paid.
Recent Ransomware Attacks
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