By Yash Neharkar Newsdio.com
The BianLian gang is extorting instead of encrypting files.
Avast's January release of a free BianLian decryptor apparently convinced the miscreants that ransomware was not their future and that pure extortion was.
"Rather than follow the typical double-extortion model of encrypting files and threatening to leak data, we have increasingly observed BianLian
choosing to forgo encrypting victims' data and instead focus on convincing victims to pay solely using an extortion demand in return for BianLian's silence,
," threat researchers for cybersecurity company Redacted wrote in a report.
Extortion is becoming more popular among ransomware groups. The Avast tool may have prompted this gang's action.