The war between Ukraine and Russia has disrupted the business model of ransomware attackers, or so it’s said. It’s an idea that’s been discussed since the war began in February, and now we have some official confirmation that perhaps this isn’t entirely wishful thinking. The venue was the recent U.K. National Cyber Security Centre’s CYBERUK […]

Does it matter how many victims of ransomware agree to pay extortion demands? Security vendors certainly think so, which is why many publish annual or bi-annual numbers that tend to show that ransomware has a shockingly high conversion rate. Looking at statistics from 2021-22, one web survey suggested that only 20% pay up, while Anomali […]

Every ransomware attack that has ever happened exploits a fundamental advantage cybercriminals have over defenders—time. Clock 1: Dwell Time Three clocks are at work here. The first starts ticking from the moment of an initial compromise and stops at the second of ransomware execution. In cybersecurity parlance, this is known as the dwell time, or […]

If there’s one thing that’s worse than being compromised by ransomware, it’s realizing that the hack that led to the ransomware compromise happened months earlier without being spotted. For attackers, this is called achieving persistence, and is considered the holy grail of malware techniques because it allows criminals to widen their net and undermine even […]

Just when you think ransomware criminals have exhausted their box of surprises, up pops something brand new nobody saw coming. The latest example, first reported by Bleeping Computer, is a disarmingly simple innovation—target organizations inside Russia for extortion attacks. According to the website, since late March a new group called NB65 claims it has attacked […]