Officials of the Palau government have dismissed claims by the DragonForce ransomware operation alleging the theft of more than 21GB of data from the island nation's systems, which it threatened to leak by Wednesday, as well as ongoing negotiations between both parties, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
No sensitive information had been exfiltrated from Palau's systems and while both LockBit and DragonForce had sent ransom notes, no additional efforts have been made to communicate with the Palau government, according to Palau Ministry of Finance Chief Information Security Officer Jay Anson, who added that the government will be strengthening user awareness training to mitigate future phishing and business email compromise attacks.
Such an incident comes amid an agreement between Palau and the U.S. government, suggesting a possible geopolitical motive behind the incident. However, DragonForce insisted that the attack was purely done for financial gain.
