Crooks pose as researchers to retarget ransomware victims

Cybersecurity researchers are being impersonated by threat actors, who are offering victims of the Royal and Akira ransomware gangs the service of deleting stolen files for a price. As reported by Arctic Wolf Labs, this new extortion campaign may be conducted by the same group. The actors are offering to hack into the ransomware groups’ server infrastructure to delete stolen data, often requesting around 5 bitcoin ($180,000) for their services.