Medusa attacks Penn Cinema
Incident Date:
February 26, 2024
Overview
Title
Medusa attacks Penn Cinema
Victim
Penn Cinema
Attacker
Medusa
Location
First Reported
February 26, 2024
The Medusa Ransomware Group's Attack on Penn Cinema
The Medusa ransomware group has attacked Penn Cinema, although no details have been given. Penn Cinema is a family-owned and independently operated movie theater. It provides an experience for its customers that is world-class. Penn Cinema was founded in 2006 in Lancaster, PA, by Penn Ketchum, the late John Byler, Jonathan Byler, and Robert Tucci. Starting as a 10-screen multiplex, Penn Cinema now offers 30 screens, including two IMAX theatres, in Lititz, PA, and Wilmington, DE. In late Fall 2018, our third location will open in Huntingdon Valley, PA.
About Medusa Ransomware
The Medusa is a RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Service) 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 preventing 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 have been one of the more active groups in the first quarter of 2023 but appear 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.
Method of Attack and Targets
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 through 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, and public sector organizations too. Medusa also employs a double extortion scheme where some data is exfiltrated prior to encryption, but 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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