The REvil ransomware gang says that they volition auction over 1TB of data stolen from New York-based amusement police firm, Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks. This information allegedly contains the "dirty" secrets of a number of celebrities. REvil claims that the contents involve sex scandals, drugs, and treachery.

Nicki Minaj, LeBron James, and Mariah Carey among the alleged victims

In a blog post, the ransomware group says they will begin the auction on July 1, noting that the outset round will incorporate information from Nicki Minaj, Mariah Carey, and LeBron James. The price for each dataset is $600,000.

Ii days later, REvil plans to auction data belonging to Bad Boy Ent. Concord. Inc, Universal, and MTV. The starting time has a starting cost of $750,000, while the latter sets are to exist sold for $1M each.

Alternatively REvil will let a unmarried entity to buy the full contents for $42,000,000. The currency requested for the auction is Monero (XMR).

The gang, also known as Sdinokibi, left a alert for law business firm head, Allen Grubman:

"Mr. Grubman, yous have a chance to end that, and y'all know what to do."

While no farther details were provided, REvil says that stolen data also contains cases of "bribery glory by Autonomous Party, sexual harassment by top politicians, the envy of celebrity for each other."

"Dirty secrets" as allurement to scam people?

Speaking with Cointelegraph, Brett Unconversant, threat analyst and ransomware expert at malware lab Emsisoft, pointed out:

"As REvil obtained (and published) relating to Lady Gaga, it'due south likely that they were able to obtain documents relating to other celebrities too. Whether the documents really do contain details of sex and political scandals is impossible to say. REvil could simply be making a bogus claim in the hope of upping the amount that people will bid."

Unconversant adds that parties in this situation are in an unfortunate position:

"Even if the ransom is paid, they'll simply receive a pinky hope that the data will not be used or sold - and that pinky promise is being made past a (very) bad faith actor."

On May 15, REvil also demanded $42 million in cryptocurrency to prevent the exposure of United states President, Donald Trump'southward "dirty laundry".