The Dominican Republic’s Instituto Agrario Dominicano (IAD) has suffered a Quantum ransomware attack. The attack encrypted multiple services and workstations throughout the government agency.
The IAD is part of the Ministry of Agriculture and is responsible for executing Agrarian Reform programmes in the country.
According to local media reports, the ransomware attack occurred on 18th August, which has impacted the agency’s usual operations.
IAD Director of Technology, Walixson Amaury Nuñez, told local media “they ask for more than 600 thousand dollars. We were affected by four physical servers and eight virtual servers; virtually all servers.”
The National Cybersecurity Centre (CNCS) says that the IP addresses of the attackers were from the US and Russia. The CNCS has been assisting the agency in their recovery from the attack.
The IAD has told local media that they only had basic security software on their systems, such as antivirus, and lack a dedicated security department.
It has been reported by BleepingComputer that the agency was unlikely to pay a ransom as they cannot afford to do so.
The publication discovered that the Quantum ransomware operation was behind the attack, which initially demanded a $650,000 ransomware from the agency.
The threat actors claim to have stolen 1TB of data.
The ransomware gang is believed to have formed as an offshoot of the Conti ransomware operation, which took over the previous rebrand of the MountLocker ransomware operation.
The rebrand to Quantum occurred in August 2021.
