I'm unclear what part of that sentence you didn't like, it was quite well formed. It's pointing out that the attackers do homework in advance and understand the victim company they target. It's illustrating the asymmetric information aspect of the attack, it's targeted with a lot of pre-work rather than a random victim.

Because this sentence is "well formed" but meaningless. Most of the things mentioned is not sensitive or even private data for a company, and some (eg "who runs HR") are probably available in the public internet. Most is findable/guessable even without data from breaches. The breaching/encryption part is not what people "notice", it is the whole point of the whole operation, and without it the rest is not a threat. You cannot contrast finding publicly available info in the internet with losing access to data. And it still did not answer if this info is used in the attacks or for contacting for the ransom, as the article mixes these 2 all the time. The whole article is a mess, and it is not because I am GenX (I am not) or sth.

Is not saying that this info is private or difficult to obtain. The paragraph is claiming that the criminals studied the victim first to launch the ransom.

“By the time … lands”

“The crooks…”

”… is just the bit…”

LLM tells.