Why Are We Seeing More Ransomware?

With the increasing prevalence of ransomware attacks, I needed to address why it was happening. In this five-minute video, I cover the factors that have changed both the nature of the market for ransomware, and the perpetrators behind ransomware attacks. These factors have resulted in more people and businesses falling victim.

Understanding the reasons for its continued success can help people grasp that ransomware is not a “more advanced virus” requiring “more advanced anti-virus” – but a different method for criminals to make money, requiring a different method to deal with it.

Watch the video or read the transcript here:

Mike: Adam, we’re here today to discuss ransomware, and I’m wondering if you can tell me why are we seeing more incidents involving ransomware?

Adam: Ransomware in 2019 has seen a tremendous increase in the number of incidents because the malware designers are now decentralized. And as a result, that makes it much cheaper for them to actually buy and sell ransomware on the Internet. Because it’s so easy to buy, it’s a lot lower skill level that we have from malware designers actually running these attacks. So, you see a lot less organized crime, less sophisticated individuals just sort of running this opportunistically, and when there’s so many different individuals participating in this, it’s very hard for law enforcement to basically find and stop them.

Mike: How did hackers used to buy and sell ransomware?

Adam: For many years, probably since, you know, early 2017 the ransomware market was comprised of dark web sites. These were TOR-routed sites that were centrally run to deal in, not just, you know, ransomware but drugs, guns, other illicit products through the transfer of bitcoins between two individuals globally. And that meant that organized crime obviously had a very vested interest in not only running these (Read more...)