#7
The Hacker News
general
July 04, 2026 at 12:47 UTC
U.S. Government Entity Paid Kairos $1 Million in Data-Theft Extortion Case
By [email protected] (The Hacker News)
AI Summary
A U.S. government entity paid approximately $1 million in extortion to a group calling itself Kairos to prevent stolen files from being leaked, according to a Ransom-ISAC case study by Rakesh Krishnan built on leaked negotiation chats and blockchain transaction trails. Notably, Kairos shows no evidence of ever deploying ransomware encryption — operating purely as a data-theft extortion actor — complicating traditional ransomware-focused defenses and incident response playbooks.
Relevance score: 76.0/100
Sponsored
Protect Your Business
Expert cybersecurity solutions to safeguard your organization from evolving threats.
Get Protected →