The most notable ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) groups are well-known for the widely publicized attacks they conduct, even outside of the cybersecurity community. However, there also exist smaller, very short-lived groups that use ransomware derived from existing variants. They’re often considered “unsophisticated” threat groups, and may be taken less seriously than that by a higher-level organization. How […]
When tallying damages associated with a ransomware attack, the initial focus centers on calculating costs relating to the six steps detailed in the NIST Computer Security Incident Handling Guide that cover the initial detection and move on to the postmortem stage as quickly as possible. Those costs are perhaps the easiest to calculate, given that […]
In some countries, kidnappings are so common that an entire industry of negotiators and consultants emerged to facilitate the exchange of ransoms and the safe recovery of victims. Many aspects of cybercrime are similar to crimes committed offline, so it should surprise nobody that ransomware negotiators not only exist, but have existed for long enough […]
One form of ransomware quickly making a name for itself is cryptojacking. With this type of attack, bad actors work to take over any system with processing power for the purpose of harnessing it to mine for cryptocurrency. How Does Cryptojacking Work? Crypto, or coin mining, is a popular activity in which the person doing […]
The stereotypical profile of a hacker in his parents’ basement developing and launching attacks can officially be put to rest. The geopolitical nature of executing attacks against states or those supporting a state have taken a prime position in the arena of ransomware. Whether individual vendettas, hacker groups looking to exploit political situations for boasting […]
How many organizations across the world were successfully breached by ransomware in the last 12 months? Normally, blogs such as this rely on guesstimates to answer such questions, but now the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) has helpfully crunched the evidence and come up with a very specific answer for the period between May […]
