CYBERSECURITY BULLETIN

Bitdefender screwed up by publicly revealing ‘DarkSide’ ransomware vulnerability

Thanks to the antivirus company, the Russian-based hackers were able to fix the flaw and unleashed a string of attacks

Just in case, you don’t recognize the ‘DarkSide’ ransomware, the notorious group of hackers was behind the high-profile cyberattack on the Colonial pipeline recently. Ironically enough, all of these damaging cybersecurity incidents could have been avoided, had it not been the public declaration of the antivirus company Bitdefender — who first identified a flaw in the ransomware that the gang was using to infect systems.

As reported, back on January 11, the antivirus company declared publicly that it had found a flaw in the ransomware being used by the ‘DarkSide to freeze computer networks of dozens of businesses in the US and Europe. It went on to say that companies facing demands from DarkSide could download a free tool from Bitdefender and avoid paying millions of dollars in ransom to the hackers.

Unfortunately, this glorified declaration turned out to be a costly mistake. Two other researchers, Fabian Wosar and Michael Gillespie had already noticed it the month before and had begun discreetly…