Businesses still at risk of ransomware attacks, warns expert
The world’s businesses are still at a high risk of attracting ransomware-based attacks, according to a new report.
Despite the frequency of such events falling off towards the end of 2017, new research undertaken by security firm F-Secure finds that there has been another marked increase in ransomware events this year.
The volume of ransomware incidents grew by more than four times throughout 2017 compared with the previous year, largely due to attacks related to the WannaCry malware, according to the firm’s report titled “The changing state of ransomware”.
WannaCry alone accounted for 90 per cent of all reported ransomware attacks in 2017, with the remainder attributable to malware families like Locky, Cryptolocker and Cerber. The majority of incidents that appear in F-Secure’s report took place in Malaysia, Japan, Colombia, Vietnam and Indonesia, with most occurring towards the end of 2017.
In total, some 343 unique types of ransomware were discovered for the first time last year – an increase of 62 per cent on the previous year, says F-Secure – but the use of any software that was not WannaCry declined throughout the past 12 months.
According to Sean Sullivan, F-Secure’s security adviser, this figure points to cyber criminals “losing interest” in this particular type of attack, as the lower level of activity in designing new ransomware after last summer indicates.
He added: “So it looks like the ransomware gold rush mentality is over, but we already see hard core extortionists continuing to use ransomware, particularly against organisations because WannaCry showed everyone how vulnerable companies are.”
Instead, says Sullivan, the online world should expect attackers to use vectors more suited to corporate-focused security breaches, using holes in company’s defences like exposed remote desktop protocol ports. Ransomware such as SamSam, which infected several crucial systems in the US city of Atlanta earlier this year, is already known to use this approach.
The real villain in all of this? Bitcoin, says Sullivan, after rising prices made the prospect of illegal mining for cryptocurrency using compromised system “a lot more attractive” to criminals.
