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#3 The Hacker News general August 11, 2026 at 16:35 UTC

DeadLock Ransomware Uses Polygon Smart Contracts to Make Extortion Infra Harder to Disrupt

By [email protected] (The Hacker News)

AI Summary

The DeadLock ransomware group has adopted a blockchain-backed extortion infrastructure using Polygon smart contracts and the Session messaging network to store and deliver resources throughout the extortion process, making traditional law-enforcement takedowns of C2 infrastructure largely ineffective. Microsoft Threat Intelligence documented this novel resilience technique, which mirrors a similar blockchain-based approach observed in the Kimwolf botnet rebuild. This represents a significant operational security evolution for ransomware actors.

Relevance score: 88.0/100

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