DisclosureLens
GLOBALMalwareTransportation & LogisticsTransportationRansomwareAkiraRansom DemandedActor NamedMedium

The Belt Railway Company of Chicago

bd_ff42d30adb0bf90c · schema v1 · pii pii-v1

Severity

Medium

Discovered

Filed

Aug 10, 2023

To disclose

Affected

Not disclosed

Linked

2 filings

Confidence

50%
Full breach record for The Belt Railway Company of Chicago

Threat-actor claim — not a regulatory filing

This row is a claim by the ransomware group Akira on its public extortion blog. It has not been validated by the victim or any regulator. Treat attribution and counts as the threat actor's assertion until a regulatory filing or victim disclosure corroborates them.

Group activity: Transportation/LogisticsDiscovered: 2023-08-10

Source: Ransomware.live

Post text · scraped from the leak site

The Belt Railway Company of Chicago has a strong safety foundation and history, and employees continuously strive for zero incidents. But there was an incident that caused 85 GB of their data appearing on our server. BRC management decided to stay silent with us so we will upload all their documents soon.

Incident timeline — mostly unverified

? — ?

Breach window unknown

Aug 10, 2023

Claim posted

Corroborated · see linked filings

Compliance clocks stay unassessable until a regulatory filing lands. Dashed segments fill in automatically when corroboration arrives.

Claim → filing

Compliance clock

Not assessable

This filing is one of 2 about the same incident.View merged incident

Linked disclosures

Why this link?

Regulatory filings (1) · sorted by filing gap

Filing propagation · 2 filings

View merged incident ↗
Leak SiteAug 10 · first · this page

Pattern: first filing Aug 10, last Oct 12 (IN) — a 63-day rolling notification. Rolling spreads often mean counsel is filing as thresholds trip per state. Why this link?

Evidence ladder

Leak-site claimThis record

Attacker assertion only. Establishes: claim date, group, alleged victim.

Press / market report

Unlocks: incident narrative, operational impact. Still no compliance clock.

State AG / regulator filing

Unlocks: discovery date, data types, affected count, compliance clock.

SEC 8-K / victim statement

Unlocks: materiality, stated response, full audit trail. Ceiling removed.

Source ceiling

  • actor name
  • victim claim
  • ransom/leak status
  • discovery date
  • materiality
  • notification
  • affected count
  • confirmed data types
  • compliance clock

The ✕ fields stay blank until a regulatory filing or victim disclosure lands.

About this groupFirst seen 2023-04-12

akira

According to ransomware.live, The Akira ransomware group is said to have emerged in March 2023, and there's much speculation about its ties to the former CONTI ransomware group. It's worth noting that with the end of CONTI's operation, several affiliates migrated to independent campaigns such as Royal, BlackBasta, and others. According to some reports, Akira affiliates also work with other ransomware operations, such as Snatch and BlackByte, as an open directory of tools used by an Akira operator was identified, which also had connections to the Snatch ransomware. The first version of the Akira ransomware was written in C++ and appended files with the '.akira' extension, creating a ransom note named 'akira_readme.txt,' partially based on the Conti V2 source code. However, on June 29, 2023, a decryptor for this version was reportedly released by Avast. Subsequently, a version was released that fixed the decryption flaw on July 2, 2023. Since then, the new version is said to be written in Rust, this time called 'megazord.exe,' and it changes the extension to '.powerranges' for encrypted files. Most of Akira's initial access vectors use brute-force attempts on Cisco VPN devices (which use single-factor authentication only). Additionally, exploitation of CVEs: CVE-2019-6693 and CVE-2022-40684 for initial access has been identified. Source: https://github.com/crocodyli/ThreatActors-TTPs

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