Price of ransomware doubles
Blackmail demands double in six months
Hackers have upped their ransomware demands to almost double the prices they were six months ago, according to a report by Symantec.
The research paper, Ransomware and Businesses 2016, found that the average ransom demand has more than doubled and is now $679, up from $294 at the end of 2015. The report found that a new record has been set for ransom demands, with a threat known as 7ev3n-HONE$T (Trojan.Cryptolocker.AD) requesting a ransom of 13 Bitcoins per computer (worth $5,083 at the time of discovery in January 2016).
Last year saw 100 new ransomware families discovered, the most dangerous being crypto-ransomware, which is capable of locking away the victim's files with strong encryption.
Symantec said that the US continues to be the country most affected by ransomware (31 per cent). Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, UK, Canada, Belgium, India, and Australia complete the top ten.
It said that while the majority of victims (57 per cent) continue to be consumers, the long-term trend indicates a slow but steady increase in ransomware attacks aimed at organisations rather than individuals.
The services sector was worst hit with 38 percent of organisational infections, followed by manufacturing, with 17 per cent of infections, along with finance, insurance and real estate, and public administration (both on 10 per cent).
"Many of these attacks employ the same high level of expertise we see in cyber espionage attacks, using a toolbox that includes exploits of software vulnerabilities and legitimate software utilities to break into and traverse an organisation's network," said the firm in a blog post.
-
The EU is charting a course to digital independence with the technological sovereignty packageNews New legislation looks to shore up digital sovereignty and reduce reliance on foreign tech
-
Anthropic warns AI is helping lower the bar for up-and-coming hackersNews AI is making it harder to differentiate between high and low-skilled actors
-
Ransomware cartels are fragmenting into volatile splinter groups, warns Met Police cyber chiefNews Commoditized "cyber crime bazaars" and AI data mining are forcing law enforcement to rewrite its playbook
-
New ransomware threat group, The Gentlemen, has become one of the most active ransomware operators, accounting for 10% of all attacksNews NTT researchers warn that the RaaS group is leveraging SystemBC malware to establish covert tunnelling, evade detection, and support rapid lateral movement across enterprise environments
-
Instructure chose to a pay ransom following the Canvas cyber attack – research shows more than half of security leaders would follow suitAnalysis Opting to pay ransoms creates huge risks for enterprises – you’re relying on the word of criminals
-
Ransomware negotiator sentenced for role in major cyber crime groupNews Deniss Zolotarjovs was a key player in a group associated with Conti
-
Threat actors ditch ‘spray and pray’ attacks in shift to targeted exploitationNews A dip in ransomware volumes points to a more targeted approach focused on vulnerability exploitation
-
Security leaders overconfident about ransomware recovery
News Few manage to recover all their data, and many experience business disruption
-
German authorities want your help finding the hackers behind GandCrab and REvilNews Daniil Maksimovich Shchukin and Anatoly Sergeevitsch Kravchuk are believed to have made millions from ransomware as a service schemes
-
The rise of teen hackers ‘makes for a good headline’, but cyber crime activities peak later in life
News With family responsibilities and mortgages to pay, it's not teenagers dishing out malware or carrying out cyber extortion
