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RedPacket Security claims that telecom giant Altice fell victim to a cyberattack by ransomware group Hive.

RedPacket Security uses web crawlers to collect threat information on the dark web. According to the company, telecom giant Altice fell victim to a ransomware attack on August 9. The attack was reportedly conducted by ransomware group Hive.

Altice and Orange are France’s two largest telecom companies. Altice is headquartered in the Netherlands. It serves millions of customers in Western Europe, Israel and the Caribbean.

The scale and damage of the attack have not been confirmed. Website Tech Monitor approached Altice for a comment, but initially received no response. Although RedPacket Security claims that the attackers stole data, no evidence was provided.

Hive

Hive first appeared in the wild in June 2021. Researchers linked the crime group to hundreds of attacks throughout the year. Security firm Group-IB claims that Hive focuses on organizations in the healthcare and financial sectors.

The group reportedly operates from Russia. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, Hive was responsible for 11 percent of all attacks on the nation’s healthcare system in the first quarter of 2022.

Earlier this month, Hive demanded a ransom of nearly €600,000 after an attack on two British colleges. The group’s malware was recently rewritten in the Rust programming language. Malware in Rust is relatively difficult to decipher. Security researchers from Microsoft suspect that Hive adopted the programming language to stay under the radar.

Tip: ‘To stop ransomware, you will need a radically different security approach’