Arguably, the first malware extortion attack occurred in 1988 – the AIDS Trojan had the potential to be the first example of ransomware, but due to a design flaw, the victims didn’t end up actually having to pay up the 189 bucks. It’s safe to say that over the past 31 years, attackers have perfected the ransomware craft, with organizations shelling out more than $25 billion per year. We don’t expect it to end any time soon.

We Want You Win the War on Ransomware Today 1

We’ve even seen the ransoms increased by as much as 2X this year alone. All this is evidenced by the recent activity on the Tripwire State of Security blog since the first of the year:

Ransomware in Industrial Control Systems

Now that we’ve established that ransomware is running wild in enterprise networks, it’s important to establish the fact that the threat isn’t just present in the office and datacenter setting; malware is making its way into ICS networks due to the fact that we are seeing increased connectivity of these once-disparate networks. Even if you aren’t an asset owner in the manufacturing, petrochemical, transportation or energy verticals, there’s a good chance you have industrial control systems in your environment. (Think building automation control systems like HVAC, elevators, backup generators and a myriad of other electrical control systems.)

Whether it’s intentional or not, ransomware (Read more...)