U.S. Government Entity Paid Kairos $1 Million in Data-Theft Extortion Case

Summary

A U.S. government entity paid about $1 million to keep stolen files from being leaked, according to a new case study by Rakesh Krishnan for Ransom-ISAC, built on a leaked negotiation chat and the blockchain trail the payment left. The odd part: the group that took the money calls itself Kairos, but it may not be a ransomware gang at all. Krishnan found no sign that it ever locked a single

SpinGraph analysis pending — check back after processing.

• 19-Year-Old Scattered Spider Suspect Extradited to Face U.S. Hacking Charges
• Unpatched Argo CD Repo-Server Flaw Could Let Attackers Take Over Kubernetes Clusters
• SharePoint RCE CVE-2026-45659 Added to CISA KEV After Active Exploitation
• New ChocoPoC RAT Targets Vulnerability Researchers via Fake PoC Exploit Repos
• FortiBleed Credential Theft Linked to INC and Lynx Ransomware Operations
• AI Agent Exploits Langflow RCE to Automate Database Ransomware Attack