The LockBit ransomware gang is adding a third weapon to its arsenal of threats: Denial of service attacks.

According to the Bleeping Computer news service, the aggressive gang is looking to hire distributed denial of service (DDoS) experts to help launch denial of service attacks on victim organizations that refuse to pay either for the return of stolen or encrypted data or for keys to decrypt scrambled data.

Its other weapons are threatening to release data stolen prior to encryption, or to just leave scrambled data encrypted unless payment is made.

Related content: LockBit affiliates strike

The new strategy comes after the LockBit data leak site was hit by a DDoS attack shortly after the ransomware gang stole data from Entrust.

In a story filed Sunday, the news site quoted the following posting by a gang member dubbed LockBitSup: “I am looking for dudosers [DDoSers] in the team, most likely now we will attack targets and provide triple extortion, encryption + date leak + dudos, because I have felt the power of dudos and how it invigorates and makes life more interesting.”

Over the weekend, the gang also released a torrent called “entrust.com” with 343GB of files allegedly heisted from Entrust.

The post LockBit ransomware gang adding DDoS attacks to its threats first appeared on IT World Canada.