Bread over Bitcoin? Hacking group asks for $125,000 ransom to be paid in baguettes

Carbs are the new crypto

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WTF?! What would you rather have: $125,000 worth of crypto or crusty French bread? It appears that one ransomware group is a bigger fan of the latter, having demanded that payment for the 40GB of compressed data it stole be paid in baguettes.

Hellcat, a newly formed ransomware group, claims it is behind the cybersecurity incident being investigated by Schneider Electric. The French multinational energy management company has confirmed a developer platform was breached.

"Schneider Electric is investigating a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized access to one of our internal project execution tracking platforms which is hosted within an isolated environment," Schneider Electric told BleepingComputer. "Our Global Incident Response team has been immediately mobilized to respond to the incident. Schneider Electric's products and services remain unaffected."

As is usually the case with these incidents, Hellcat says it will delete the 40GB of compressed data it stole from Schneider Electric if a ransom is paid. Otherwise, it will be made public. The pilfered files contain critical data, including projects, issues, and plugins, along with over 400,000 rows of user data.

Hellcat leaked data on Monday that the group claimed belonged to Jordan's Ministry of Education and Tanzania's College of Business Education.

Hellcat is asking for $125,000 to delete the data. It said that if Schneider publicly admits to the breach, it would cut the ransom demand in half to $62,500.

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However, rather than demanding the money in crypto, as is the norm, Hellcat is asking for it to be paid in baguettes.

With the average price of a standard baguette in France at €1.07, or approximately $1.09, Schneider would need to hand over at least 58,715 of these long French loaves.

It is presumed, of course, that the demand for the baguettes was just a joke, sadly. There is a cryptocurrency called Baguette, but its total supply is only worth slightly more than $45,000, so Hellcat was unlikely to be referring to that obscure token. Moreover, a post on X shows the group asking for $125,000 in Monero, the crypto that is popular in cybercrimes due to its enhanced privacy and anonymity.

Last week, it was reported that 2024 is set to be another record-breaking year for ransomware attacks, with victims handing over more money than ever before. This is despite several incidents of authorities shutting down major ransomware operations this year, including the seizing and disruption of LockBit.

_{Masthead: Curated Lifestyle}