Ransomware continues to spread quickly and widely across the world, tightening its hold on the data and devices of both individuals and businesses.
Over the last year, ransomware has grown in sophistication and diversity. Kaspersky's Security Bulletin the evolution of ransomware, including key developments from the last 12 months, including the main trends and discoveries, as well as what measures are being taken to fight back against it.
A business is attacked by ransomware every 40 seconds
Attacks on businesses increased three-fold between January and the end of September, rising from an attack every two minutes to one every 40 seconds. For individuals, the rate of increase went from every 20 seconds to every 10 seconds. Overall, 23.9% of ransomware attacks are targeting corporates, up from 17% at the beginning of 2016.
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A quarter of all users were attacked by CTB-Locker ransomware
Cerber and Locky arrived in the early spring; nasty, virulent strains of ransomware that are propagated widely through spam attachments and exploit kits. CryptXXX appeared a little later on, but established itself with the other two as a major player', targeting individuals and corporates. All three families continue to evolve alongside well-established incumbents such as CTB-Locker, CryptoWall and Shade.
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42% of small and medium-sized businesses were hit by ransomware last year
According to Kaspersky Lab research, in 2016, one in five businesses worldwide suffered an IT security incident as a result of a ransomware attack. As a result, small and medium-sized businesses are increasingly struggling with ransomware attacks, with 42% of them being hit by ransomware in the last 12 months. Of those affected, 32% paid the ransom, but one in five never got their files back, even after paying.
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The number of new ransomware modifications has increased by eleven-fold
62 new ransomware families appeared in 2016, bringing with them a vast increase in the number of new ransomware modifications: 32,091 in Q3 from 2,900 in Q1, an increase of 11-fold. Locky ransomware, a new addition last spring, has so far been spread across 114 countries.
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One in five IT and education businesses was affected by ransomware
Social engineering and human error remain key factors in corporate vulnerability. One in five cases involving significant data loss came about through employee carelessness or lack of awareness. Some industry sectors, including education and IT/telecoms are harder hit than others, but the research shows that all industries are at risk; there's no such thing as a low-risk sector any more.
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The unseen risk in Microsoft 365: disaster recoveryBusinesses that assume they’re covered for data backup could come unstuck in a time of crisis
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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's prediction about AI in software development is nowhere nearly to becoming a realityNews In March, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei claimed up to 90% of code would be written by AI within six months – his prediction hasn't quite come to fruition.
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Prolific ransomware operator added to Europe’s Most Wanted list as US dangles $10 million rewardNews The US Department of Justice is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest of Volodymyr Viktorovych Tymoshchuk, an alleged ransomware criminal.
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Jaguar Land Rover “did the right thing” shutting down systems to thwart cyber attackNews The attack on Jaguar Land Rover highlights the growing attractiveness of the automotive sector
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Ransomware attack on IT supplier disrupts hundreds of Swedish municipalitiesNews The attack on IT systems supplier Miljödata has impacted public sector services across the country
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A notorious hacker group is ramping up cloud-based ransomware attacksNews The Storm-0501 threat group is refining its tactics, according to Microsoft, shifting away from traditional endpoint-based attacks and toward cloud-based ransomware.
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Security researchers have just identified what could be the first ‘AI-powered’ ransomware strain – and it uses OpenAI’s gpt-oss-20b modelNews Using OpenAI's gpt-oss:20b model, ‘PromptLock’ generates malicious Lua scripts via the Ollama API.
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Data I/O shuts down systems in wake of ransomware attack
News Regulatory filings by Data I/O suggest the costs of dealing with the attack could be significant
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Average ransom payment doubles in a single quarterNews Targeted social engineering and data exfiltration have become the biggest tactics as three major ransomware groups dominate
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BlackSuit ransomware gang taken down in latest law enforcement sting – but members have already formed a new groupNews The notorious gang has seen its servers taken down and bitcoin seized, but may have morphed into a new group called Chaos
