A November 13, 2025, a Cybersecurity Advisory warned that new activity by the Akira ransomware variant “presents an imminent threat to critical infrastructure.” The Advisory was jointly issued by four U.S. agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center, and the Department of Health and Human Services, and five international agencies, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, France’s Office Anti-Cybercriminalite – French Cybercrime Central Office, Germany’s Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Karlsruhe – Cybercrime-Zentrum Baden-Württemberg and Landeskriminalamt Baden-Württemberg, and the Netherlands’s National Cyber Security Centre.
Akira has been attacking organizations since March 2023, and the most recent Advisory updates an initial alert published in April 2024 warning organizations about Akira, including providing information about observed tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that organizations can be aware of to protect themselves against an attack.
Since its inception in approximately March 2023, it is reported that Akira has “pocketed $244 million as of late September.” The FBI calls Akira one of the top five ransomware variants currently attacking companies.
According to the Advisory, Akira is primarily targeting “small- and medium-sized businesses, but have also impacted larger organizations across various sectors, with a notable preference for organizations in the manufacturing, educational institutions, information technology, healthcare and public health, financial services, and food and agriculture sectors.”
The Joint Advisory recommends that organizations:
- Prioritize remediating known exploited vulnerabilities;
- Enable and enforce phishing-resistant multifactor authentication (MFA); and
- Maintain regular backups of critical data, ensure backups are stored offline, and regularly test the restoration process.
The Advisory provides useful information worthy of your consideration about measures to take to harden defenses against an attack.
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