Ransomware is a type of
malware
Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depri ...
from
cryptovirology
Cryptovirology refers to the use of cryptography to devise particularly powerful malware, such as ransomware and asymmetric backdoors. Traditionally, cryptography and its applications are defensive in nature, and provide privacy, authentication, ...
that threatens to publish the victim's
personal data or permanently block access to it unless a
ransom
Ransom is the practice of holding a prisoner or item to extort money or property to secure their release, or the sum of money involved in such a practice.
When ransom means "payment", the word comes via Old French ''rançon'' from Latin ''red ...
is paid off. While some simple ransomware may lock the system without damaging any files, more advanced malware uses a technique called cryptoviral extortion. It
encrypts
In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can deci ...
the victim's files, making them inaccessible, and demands a ransom payment to decrypt them.
In a properly implemented cryptoviral extortion attack, recovering the files without the decryption
key
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (map ...
is an
intractable problem – and difficult to trace
digital currencies
Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital cu ...
such as
paysafecard
Paysafecard (as a brand stylized in lowercase) is a prepaid online payment method based on vouchers with a 16-digit PIN code, independent of bank account, credit card, or other personal information. Customers can purchase vouchers at local sales o ...
or
Bitcoin
Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...
and other
cryptocurrencies
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank
A bank is a financial i ...
are used for the ransoms, making tracing and prosecuting the perpetrators difficult.
Ransomware attacks are typically carried out using a
Trojan
Trojan or Trojans may refer to:
* Of or from the ancient city of Troy
* Trojan language, the language of the historical Trojans
Arts and entertainment Music
* ''Les Troyens'' ('The Trojans'), an opera by Berlioz, premiered part 1863, part 189 ...
disguised as a legitimate file that the user is tricked into downloading or opening when it arrives as an email attachment. However, one high-profile example, the
WannaCry worm
The WannaCry ransomware attack was a worldwide cyberattack in May 2017 by the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm, which targeted computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system by encrypting data and demanding ransom payments in the Bitco ...
, traveled automatically between computers without user interaction.
Starting as early as 1989 with the first documented ransomware known as the
AIDS trojan, the use of ransomware scams has grown internationally.
There were 181.5 million ransomware attacks in the first six months of 2018. This record marks a 229% increase over this same time frame in 2017.
In June 2014, vendor
McAfee
McAfee Corp. ( ), formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American global computer security software company head ...
released data showing that it had collected more than double the number of ransomware samples that quarter than it had in the same quarter of the previous year.
CryptoLocker
The CryptoLocker ransomware attack was a cyberattack using the ''CryptoLocker'' ransomware that occurred from 5 September 2013 to late May 2014. The attack utilized a trojan that targeted computers running Microsoft Windows, and was believed ...
was particularly successful, procuring an estimated US$3 million before it was taken down by authorities,
and CryptoWall was estimated by the US
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
(FBI) to have accrued over US$18 million by June 2015.
In 2020, the IC3 received 2,474 complaints identified as ransomware with adjusted losses of over $29.1 million. The losses could be more than that, according to the FBI. According to a report by
SonicWall
SonicWall is an American cybersecurity company that sells a range of Internet appliances primarily directed at content control and network security. These include devices providing services for network firewalls, unified threat management (UTM) ...
, there were around 623 million ransomware attacks in 2021.
Operation
The concept of file-encrypting ransomware was invented and implemented by Young and
Yung at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
and was presented at the 1996 IEEE Security & Privacy conference. It is called ''cryptoviral extortion'' and it was inspired by the fictional facehugger in the movie ''
Alien
Alien primarily refers to:
* Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country
** Enemy alien, the above in times of war
* Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth
** Specifically, intelligent extrater ...
''.
Cryptoviral extortion is the following three-round protocol carried out between the attacker and the victim.
#
ttacker→victimThe attacker generates a key pair and places the corresponding public key in the malware. The malware is released.
#
ictim→attackerTo carry out the cryptoviral extortion attack, the malware generates a random symmetric key and encrypts the victim's data with it. It uses the public key in the malware to encrypt the symmetric key. This is known as
hybrid encryption In cryptography, a hybrid cryptosystem is one which combines the convenience of a public-key cryptosystem with the efficiency of a symmetric-key cryptosystem. Public-key cryptosystems are convenient in that they do not require the sender and receiv ...
and it results in a small asymmetric ciphertext as well as the symmetric ciphertext of the victim's data. It zeroizes the symmetric key and the original plaintext data to prevent recovery. It puts up a message to the user that includes the asymmetric ciphertext and how to pay the ransom. The victim sends the asymmetric ciphertext and e-money to the attacker.
#
ttacker→victimThe attacker receives the payment, deciphers the asymmetric ciphertext with the attacker's private key, and sends the symmetric key to the victim. The victim deciphers the encrypted data with the needed symmetric key thereby completing the cryptovirology attack.
The
symmetric key
Symmetric-key algorithms are algorithms for cryptography that use the same cryptographic keys for both the encryption of plaintext and the decryption of ciphertext. The keys may be identical, or there may be a simple transformation to go between t ...
is randomly generated and will not assist other victims. At no point is the attacker's private key exposed to victims and the victim need only send a very small ciphertext (the encrypted symmetric-cipher key) to the attacker.
Ransomware attacks are typically carried out using a
Trojan
Trojan or Trojans may refer to:
* Of or from the ancient city of Troy
* Trojan language, the language of the historical Trojans
Arts and entertainment Music
* ''Les Troyens'' ('The Trojans'), an opera by Berlioz, premiered part 1863, part 189 ...
, entering a system through, for example, a malicious attachment, embedded link in a
Phishing
Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent (e.g., spoofed, fake, or otherwise deceptive) message designed to trick a person into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious softwar ...
email, or a vulnerability in a network service. The program then runs a
payload
Payload is the object or the entity which is being carried by an aircraft or launch vehicle. Sometimes payload also refers to the carrying capacity of an aircraft or launch vehicle, usually measured in terms of weight. Depending on the nature of ...
, which locks the system in some fashion, or claims to lock the system but does not (e.g., a
scareware
Scareware is a form of malware which uses social engineering to cause shock, anxiety, or the perception of a threat in order to manipulate users into buying unwanted software. Scareware is part of a class of malicious software that includes r ...
program). Payloads may display a fake warning purportedly by an entity such as a
law enforcement agency
A law enforcement agency (LEA) is any government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws.
Jurisdiction
LEAs which have their ability to apply their powers restricted in some way are said to operate within a jurisdiction.
LEAs ...
, falsely claiming that the system has been used for illegal activities, contains content such as
pornography
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults, and
"pirated" media.
Some payloads consist simply of an application designed to lock or restrict the system until payment is made, typically by setting the
Windows Shell
The Windows shell is the graphical user interface for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Its readily identifiable elements consist of the desktop, the taskbar, the Start menu, the task switcher and the AutoPlay feature. On some versions of W ...
to itself,
or even modifying the
master boot record and/or
partition table
Disk partitioning or disk slicing is the creation of one or more regions on secondary storage, so that each region can be managed separately. These regions are called partitions. It is typically the first step of preparing a newly installed disk, ...
to prevent the operating system from booting until it is repaired.
The most sophisticated payloads
encrypt
In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can decip ...
files, with many using
strong encryption to
encrypt
In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can decip ...
the victim's files in such a way that only the malware author has the needed decryption key.
Payment is virtually always the goal, and the victim is
coerced
Coercion () is compelling a party to act in an involuntary manner by the use of threats, including threats to use force against a party. It involves a set of forceful actions which violate the free will of an individual in order to induce a desi ...
into paying for the ransomware to be removed either by supplying a program that can decrypt the files, or by sending an unlock code that undoes the payload's changes. While the attacker may simply take the money without returning the victim's files, it is in the attacker's best interest to perform the decryption as agreed, since victims will stop sending payments if it becomes known that they serve no purpose. A key element in making ransomware work for the attacker is a convenient payment system that is hard to trace. A range of such payment methods have been used, including
wire transfer
Wire transfer, bank transfer, or credit transfer, is a method of electronic funds transfer from one person or entity to another. A wire transfer can be made from one bank account to another bank account, or through a transfer of cash at a cash ...
s,
premium-rate text messages,
pre-paid
voucher
A voucher is a bond of the redeemable transaction type which is worth a certain monetary value and which may be spent only for specific reasons or on specific goods. Examples include housing, travel, and food vouchers. The term voucher is also a ...
services such as
paysafecard
Paysafecard (as a brand stylized in lowercase) is a prepaid online payment method based on vouchers with a 16-digit PIN code, independent of bank account, credit card, or other personal information. Customers can purchase vouchers at local sales o ...
,
and the
Bitcoin
Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...
cryptocurrency
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...
.
In May 2020, vendor Sophos reported that the global average cost to remediate a ransomware attack (considering downtime, people time, device cost, network cost, lost opportunity and ransom paid) was $761,106. Ninety-five percent of organizations that paid the ransom had their data restored.
History
Encrypting ransomware
The first known malware extortion attack, the
"AIDS Trojan" written by
Joseph Popp
AIDS, also known as Aids Info Disk or PC Cyborg Trojan, is a DOS Trojan horse whose payload mungs and encrypts the names of all directories on drive C:. It was developed by Dr. Joseph Popp, an evolutionary biologist who graduated from Harvard. ...
in 1989, had a design failure so severe it was not necessary to pay the extortionist at all. Its payload hid the files on the hard drive and encrypted only their
names
A name is a term used for identification by an external observer. They can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. The entity identified by a name is called its referent. A persona ...
, and displayed a message claiming that the user's license to use a certain piece of software had expired. The user was asked to pay
US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
189 to "PC Cyborg Corporation" in order to obtain a repair tool even though the decryption key could be extracted from the code of the Trojan. The Trojan was also known as "PC Cyborg". Popp was declared
mentally unfit to stand trial for his actions, but he promised to donate the profits from the malware to fund
AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
research.
The idea of abusing anonymous cash systems to safely collect ransom from human
kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the unlawful confinement of a person against their will, often including transportation/asportation. The asportation and abduction element is typically but not necessarily conducted by means of force or fear: the p ...
was introduced in 1992 by Sebastiaan von Solms and
David Naccache
David Naccache is a cryptographer, currently a professor at the École normale supérieure and a member of its Computer Laboratory. He was previously a professor at Panthéon-Assas University.
Biography
He received his Ph.D. in 1995 from the ...
.
This electronic money collection method was also proposed for cryptoviral extortion attacks.
In the von Solms-Naccache scenario a newspaper publication was used (since bitcoin ledgers did not exist at the time the paper was written).
The notion of using public key cryptography for data kidnapping attacks was introduced in 1996 by Adam L. Young and
Moti Yung
Mordechai M. "Moti" Yung is a cryptographer and computer scientist known for his work on cryptovirology and kleptography.
Career
Yung earned his PhD from Columbia University in 1988 under the supervision of Zvi Galil. In the past, he worked at the ...
. Young and Yung critiqued the failed AIDS Information Trojan that relied on
symmetric cryptography alone, the fatal flaw being that the decryption key could be extracted from the Trojan, and implemented an experimental proof-of-concept cryptovirus on a
Macintosh SE/30
The Macintosh SE/30 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from January 1989 to October 1991. It is the fastest of the original black-and-white compact Macintosh series.
The SE/30 has a black-and-white monitor ...
that used
RSA and the
Tiny Encryption Algorithm
In cryptography, the Tiny Encryption Algorithm (TEA) is a block cipher notable for its simplicity of description and implementation, typically a few lines of code. It was designed by David Wheeler and Roger Needham of the Cambridge Computer L ...
(TEA) to
hybrid encrypt the victim's data. Since
public key cryptography
Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic alg ...
is used, the virus only contains the ''encryption'' key. The attacker keeps the corresponding ''private'' decryption key private. Young and Yung's original experimental cryptovirus had the victim send the asymmetric ciphertext to the attacker who deciphers it and returns the symmetric decryption key it contains to the victim for a fee. Long before
electronic money
Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital cu ...
existed Young and Yung proposed that electronic money could be extorted through encryption as well, stating that "the virus writer can effectively hold all of the money ransom until half of it is given to him. Even if the e-money was previously encrypted by the user, it is of no use to the user if it gets encrypted by a cryptovirus".
They referred to these attacks as being "
cryptoviral extortion", an overt attack that is part of a larger class of attacks in a field called
cryptovirology
Cryptovirology refers to the use of cryptography to devise particularly powerful malware, such as ransomware and asymmetric backdoors. Traditionally, cryptography and its applications are defensive in nature, and provide privacy, authentication, ...
, which encompasses both overt and covert attacks.
The cryptoviral extortion protocol was inspired by the parasitic relationship between H. R. Giger's facehugger and its host in the movie ''
Alien
Alien primarily refers to:
* Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country
** Enemy alien, the above in times of war
* Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth
** Specifically, intelligent extrater ...
''.
Examples of extortionate ransomware became prominent in May 2005.
By mid-2006, Trojans such as
Gpcode
PGPCoder or GPCode is a trojan that encrypts files on the infected computer and then asks for a ransom in order to release these files, a type of behavior dubbed ransomware or cryptovirology.
Trojan
Once installed on a computer, the trojan crea ...
, TROJ.RANSOM.A,
Archiveus, Krotten, Cryzip, and MayArchive began utilizing more sophisticated RSA encryption schemes, with ever-increasing key-sizes. Gpcode.AG, which was detected in June 2006, was encrypted with a 660-bit RSA public key.
In June 2008, a variant known as Gpcode.AK was detected. Using a 1024-bit RSA key, it was believed large enough to be computationally infeasible to break without a concerted
distributed Distribution may refer to:
Mathematics
*Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations
*Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a varia ...
effort.
Encrypting ransomware returned to prominence in late 2013 with the propagation of
CryptoLocker
The CryptoLocker ransomware attack was a cyberattack using the ''CryptoLocker'' ransomware that occurred from 5 September 2013 to late May 2014. The attack utilized a trojan that targeted computers running Microsoft Windows, and was believed ...
—using the
Bitcoin
Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...
digital currency
Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital cu ...
platform to collect ransom money. In December 2013,
ZDNet
ZDNET is a business technology news website owned and operated by Red Ventures.
The brand was founded on April 1, 1991, as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication.
Hist ...
estimated based on Bitcoin transaction information that between 15 October and 18 December, the operators of CryptoLocker had procured about US$27 million from infected users.
The CryptoLocker technique was
widely copied in the months following, including CryptoLocker 2.0 (thought not to be related to CryptoLocker), CryptoDefense (which initially contained a major design flaw that stored the private key on the infected system in a
user-retrievable location, due to its use of Windows' built-in encryption APIs),
and the August 2014 discovery of a Trojan specifically targeting
network-attached storage
Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level storage) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. The term "NAS" can refer to both the tech ...
devices produced by
Synology.
In January 2015, it was reported that ransomware-styled attacks have occurred against individual websites via hacking, and through ransomware designed to target
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
-based
web server
A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiate ...
s.
In some infections, there is a two-stage payload, common in many malware systems. The user is tricked into running a script, which downloads the main virus and executes it. In early versions of the dual-payload system, the script was contained in a Microsoft Office document with an attached VBScript macro, or in a windows scripting facility (WSF) file. As detection systems started blocking these first stage payloads, the Microsoft Malware Protection Center identified a trend away toward
LNK file
In computing, a file shortcut is a handle in a user interface that allows the user to find a file or resource located in a different directory or folder from the place where the shortcut is located. Similarly, an Internet shortcut allows the use ...
s with self-contained Microsoft Windows
PowerShell
PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management program from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell (computing), shell and the associated scripting language. Initially a Windows component only, known as Windows PowerShell, it ...
scripts.
In 2016, PowerShell was found to be involved in nearly 40% of endpoint security incidents,
Some ransomware strains have used
proxies tied to
Tor
Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to:
Places
* Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain
* Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city
* Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano
* Tor Bay, Devon, England
* Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia
Sc ...
hidden service
Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to conc ...
s to connect to their
command and control
Command and control (abbr. C2) is a "set of organizational and technical attributes and processes ... hatemploys human, physical, and information resources to solve problems and accomplish missions" to achieve the goals of an organization or en ...
servers, increasing the difficulty of tracing the exact location of the criminals.
Furthermore,
dark web
The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on ''darknets'': overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communi ...
vendors have increasingly started to offer the technology
as a service
As a service (AAS) is a business model in which something is being presented to a customer, either internal or external, as a service. As-a-Service offerings provide endpoints for customers/consumers to interface with which are usually API
A ...
, wherein ransomware is sold, ready for deployment on victims' machines, on a subscription basis, similarly to Adobe Creative Cloud or Office 365.
Symantec has classified ransomware to be the most dangerous cyber threat.
On 28 September 2020, the computer systems at US’ biggest healthcare provider the
Universal Health Services
Universal Health Services, Inc. (UHS) is an American Fortune 500 company that provides hospital and healthcare services, based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. In 2021, its annual revenues were $12.6 billion.
Company history
Alan B. Miller, ...
, was hit by a ransomware attack. The UHS chain from different locations reported noticing problems, with some locations reporting locked computers and phone systems from early Sunday (27 September).
Non-encrypting ransomware
In August 2010, Russian authorities arrested nine individuals connected to a ransomware Trojan known as WinLock. Unlike the previous Gpcode Trojan, WinLock did not use encryption. Instead, WinLock trivially restricted access to the system by displaying pornographic images and asked users to send a
premium-rate SMS (costing around US$10) to receive a code that could be used to unlock their machines. The scam hit numerous users across Russia and neighbouring countries—reportedly earning the group over US$16 million.
In 2011, a ransomware Trojan surfaced that imitated the
Windows Product Activation
Microsoft Product Activation is a digital rights management, DRM technology used by Microsoft Corporation in several of its computer computer software, software programs, most notably its Microsoft Windows, Windows operating system and its Micro ...
notice, and informed users that a system's Windows installation had to be re-activated due to "
eing avictim of fraud". An online activation option was offered (like the actual Windows activation process), but was unavailable, requiring the user to call one of six
international numbers to input a 6-digit code. While the malware claimed that this call would be free, it was routed through a rogue operator in a country with high international phone rates, who placed the call on hold, causing the user to incur large international
long-distance
Long distance or Long-distance may refer to:
*Long-distance calling
* Long-distance operator
* Long-distance relationship
* Long-distance train
*Long-distance anchor pylon, see dead-end tower
Footpaths
* Long-distance trail
*European long-d ...
charges.
In February 2013, a ransomware Trojan based on the Stamp.EK
exploit kit
An exploit kit is a tool used for automatically managing and deploying exploits against a target computer. Exploit kits allow attackers to deliver malware without having advanced knowledge of the exploits being used. Browser exploits are typica ...
surfaced; the malware was distributed via sites hosted on the project hosting services
SourceForge
SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...
and
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...
that claimed to offer "fake nude pics" of celebrities.
In July 2013, an
OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
-specific ransomware Trojan surfaced, which displays a web page that accuses the user of downloading pornography. Unlike its Windows-based counterparts, it does not block the entire computer, but simply
exploits the behaviour of the web browser itself to frustrate attempts to close the page through normal means.
In July 2013, a 21-year-old man from Virginia, whose computer coincidentally did contain pornographic photographs of underage girls with whom he had conducted sexualized communications, turned himself in to police after receiving and being deceived by
FBI MoneyPak Ransomware accusing him of possessing child pornography. An investigation discovered the incriminating files, and the man was charged with
child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse (CSA), also called child molestation, is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include engaging in sexual activities with a child (whet ...
and possession of child pornography.
Exfiltration (Leakware / Doxware)
The converse of ransomware is a
cryptovirology
Cryptovirology refers to the use of cryptography to devise particularly powerful malware, such as ransomware and asymmetric backdoors. Traditionally, cryptography and its applications are defensive in nature, and provide privacy, authentication, ...
attack invented by Adam L. Young that threatens to publish stolen information from the victim's computer system rather than deny the victim access to it.
In a leakware attack, malware exfiltrates sensitive host data either to the attacker or alternatively, to remote instances of the malware, and the attacker threatens to publish the victim's data unless a ransom is paid. The attack was presented at
West Point
The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...
in 2003 and was summarized in the book ''Malicious Cryptography'' as follows, "The attack differs from the extortion attack in the following way. In the extortion attack, the victim is denied access to its own valuable information and has to pay to get it back, where in the attack that is presented here the victim retains access to the information but its disclosure is at the discretion of the computer virus".
The attack is rooted in game theory and was originally dubbed "non-zero sum games and survivable malware". The attack can yield monetary gain in cases where the malware acquires access to information that may damage the victim user or organization, e.g., the reputational damage that could result from publishing proof that the attack itself was a success.
Common targets for exfiltration include:
* third party information stored by the primary victim (such as customer account information or health records);
* information proprietary to the victim (such as trade secrets and product information)
* embarrassing information (such as the victim's health information or information about the victim's personal past)
Exfiltration attacks are usually targeted, with a curated victim list, and often preliminary surveillance of the victim's systems to find potential data targets and weaknesses.
Mobile ransomware
With the increased popularity of ransomware on PC platforms, ransomware targeting
mobile operating system
A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typical laptops are "mobile", the operating systems used on ...
s has also proliferated. Typically, mobile ransomware payloads are blockers, as there is little incentive to encrypt data since it can be easily restored via online synchronization.
Mobile ransomware typically targets the
Android platform, as it allows applications to be installed from third-party sources.
The payload is typically distributed as an
APK file installed by an unsuspecting user; it may attempt to display a blocking message over top of all other applications,
while another used a form of
clickjacking
Clickjacking (classified as a user interface redress attack or UI redressing) is a malicious technique of tricking a user into clicking on something different from what the user perceives, thus potentially revealing confidential information or ...
to cause the user to give it "device administrator" privileges to achieve deeper access to the system.
Different tactics have been used on
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
devices, such as exploiting
iCloud
iCloud is a Personal cloud, cloud service from Apple Inc. launched on October 12, 2011 as a successor to MobileMe. , the service had an estimated 850 million users, up from 782 million users in 2016.
iCloud enables users to sync their data to t ...
accounts and using the
Find My iPhone
Find My iPhone (known as Find My Mac in macOS) was an app and service provided by Apple Inc. that allowed remote locating of iOS devices, Mac computers, Apple Watch, and AirPods. Find My iPhone was enhanced and merged into the app Find My in iO ...
system to lock access to the device.
On
iOS 10.3, Apple patched a bug in the handling of JavaScript pop-up windows in
Safari
A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...
that had been exploited by ransomware websites.
It recently has been shown that ransomware may also target ARM architectures like those that can be found in various Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, such as Industrial IoT edge devices.
In August 2019 researchers demonstrated it's possible to infect
DSLR camera
A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that combines the optics and the mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor.
The reflex design scheme is the primary difference between a ...
s with ransomware.
Digital cameras often use
Picture Transfer Protocol
Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) is a protocol developed by the International Imaging Industry Association to allow the transfer of images from digital cameras to computers and other peripheral devices without the need of additional device drivers. ...
(PTP - standard protocol used to transfer files.) Researchers found that it was possible to exploit vulnerabilities in the protocol to infect target camera(s) with ransomware (or execute any arbitrary code). This attack was presented at the
Defcon
The defense readiness condition (DEFCON) is an alert state used by the United States Armed Forces. (DEFCON is not mentioned in the 2010 and newer document)
The DEFCON system was developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and unified and spe ...
security conference in Las Vegas as a proof of concept attack (not as actual armed malware).
Notable attack targets
Notable software packages
Reveton
In 2012, a major ransomware Trojan known as Reveton began to spread. Based on the Citadel
Trojan
Trojan or Trojans may refer to:
* Of or from the ancient city of Troy
* Trojan language, the language of the historical Trojans
Arts and entertainment Music
* ''Les Troyens'' ('The Trojans'), an opera by Berlioz, premiered part 1863, part 189 ...
(which, itself, is based on the
Zeus
Zeus or , , ; grc, Δῐός, ''Diós'', label=Genitive case, genitive Aeolic Greek, Boeotian Aeolic and Doric Greek#Laconian, Laconian grc-dor, Δεύς, Deús ; grc, Δέος, ''Déos'', label=Genitive case, genitive el, Δίας, ''D ...
Trojan), its payload displays a warning purportedly from a law enforcement agency claiming that the computer has been used for illegal activities, such as downloading
unlicensed software or
child pornography
Child pornography (also called CP, child sexual abuse material, CSAM, child porn, or kiddie porn) is pornography that unlawfully exploits children for sexual stimulation. It may be produced with the direct involvement or sexual assault of a chi ...
. Due to this behaviour, it is commonly referred to as the "Police Trojan".
The warning informs the user that to unlock their system, they would have to pay a fine using a voucher from an anonymous prepaid cash service such as
Ukash
Ukash was a UK-based electronic money system that allowed users to exchange their cash for a secure code to make online payment, payments online. It was acquired by Skrill Group in April 2014 and merged into Austrian competitor paysafecard, acq ...
or
paysafecard
Paysafecard (as a brand stylized in lowercase) is a prepaid online payment method based on vouchers with a 16-digit PIN code, independent of bank account, credit card, or other personal information. Customers can purchase vouchers at local sales o ...
. To increase the illusion that the computer is being tracked by law enforcement, the screen also displays the computer's
IP address
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...
, while some versions display footage from a victim's
webcam
A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripheral d ...
to give the illusion that the user is being recorded.
Reveton initially began spreading in various European countries in early 2012.
Variants were localized with templates branded with the logos of different law enforcement organizations based on the user's country; for example, variants used in the United Kingdom contained the branding of organizations such as the
Metropolitan Police Service
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...
and the
Police National E-Crime Unit
The Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) was part of the Specialist Crime Directorate of the Metropolitan Police Service in London, dedicated to combating e-crime in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The unit had a national remit, and was cre ...
. Another version contained the logo of the
royalty collection society PRS for Music
PRS for Music Limited (formerly The MCPS-PRS Alliance Limited) is a British music copyright collective, made up of two collection societies: the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and the Performing Right Society (PRS). It undertakes ...
, which specifically accused the user of illegally downloading music.
In a statement warning the public about the malware, the Metropolitan Police clarified that they would never lock a computer in such a way as part of an investigation.
In May 2012,
Trend Micro
is an American-Japanese multinational cyber security software company with global headquarters in Tokyo, Japan and Irving, Texas, United State.Other regional headquarters and R&D centers are located around East Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and ...
threat researchers discovered templates for variations for the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, suggesting that its authors may have been planning to target users in North America.
By August 2012, a new variant of Reveton began to spread in the United States, claiming to require the payment of a
$200 fine to the FBI using a
MoneyPak
The Green Dot Corporation is an American financial technology and bank holding company headquartered in Austin. It is the world's largest prepaid debit card company by market capitalization. Green Dot is also a payments platform company and is ...
card.
In February 2013, a Russian citizen was arrested in
Dubai
Dubai (, ; ar, دبي, translit=Dubayy, , ) is the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, the most populated of the 7 emirates of the United Arab Emirates.The Government and Politics of ...
by Spanish authorities for his connection to a crime ring that had been using Reveton; ten other individuals were arrested on
money laundering
Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdictions ...
charges.
In August 2014,
Avast Software
Avast Software s.r.o. is a Czech multinational cybersecurity software company headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic that researches and develops computer security software, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Avast has more than ...
reported that it had found new variants of Reveton that also distribute password-stealing malware as part of its payload.
CryptoLocker
Encrypting ransomware reappeared in September 2013 with a Trojan known as ''
CryptoLocker
The CryptoLocker ransomware attack was a cyberattack using the ''CryptoLocker'' ransomware that occurred from 5 September 2013 to late May 2014. The attack utilized a trojan that targeted computers running Microsoft Windows, and was believed ...
'', which generated a 2048-bit RSA key pair and uploaded in turn to a command-and-control server, and used to encrypt files using a
whitelist
A whitelist, allowlist, or passlist is a mechanism which explicitly allows some identified entities to access a particular privilege, service, mobility, or recognition i.e. it is a list of things allowed when everything is denied by default. It is ...
of specific
file extension
A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically d ...
s. The malware threatened to delete the private key if a payment of
Bitcoin
Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...
or a pre-paid cash voucher was not made within 3 days of the infection. Due to the extremely large key size it uses, analysts and those affected by the Trojan considered CryptoLocker extremely difficult to repair.
Even after the deadline passed, the private key could still be obtained using an online tool, but the price would increase to 10 BTC—which cost approximately US$2300 as of November 2013.
CryptoLocker was isolated by the seizure of the
Gameover ZeuS
GameOverZeus is a peer-to-peer botnet based on components from the earlier ZeuS trojan. The malware was created by Russian hacker Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev. It is believed to have been spread through use of the Cutwail botnet.
Unlike its pr ...
botnet
A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send spam, and allow the attacker to access the device and its conn ...
as part of
Operation Tovar
Operation Tovar is an international collaborative operation carried out by law enforcement agencies from multiple countries against the Gameover ZeuS botnet, which is believed by the investigators to have been used in bank fraud and the distributi ...
, as officially announced by the
U.S. Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
on 2 June 2014. The Department of Justice also publicly issued an
indictment
An indictment ( ) is a formal accusation that a legal person, person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that use the concept of felony, felonies, the most serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that do not use the felonies concep ...
against the Russian hacker Evgeniy Bogachev for his alleged involvement in the botnet.
It was estimated that at least US$3 million was extorted with the malware before the shutdown.
CryptoLocker.F and TorrentLocker
In September 2014, a wave of ransomware Trojans surfaced that first targeted users in
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
, under the names ''CryptoWall'' and ''CryptoLocker'' (which is, as with CryptoLocker 2.0, unrelated to the original CryptoLocker). The Trojans spread via fraudulent e-mails claiming to be failed parcel delivery notices from
Australia Post
Australia Post, formally the Australian Postal Corporation, is the government business enterprise that provides postal services in Australia. The head office of Australia Post is located in Bourke Street, Melbourne, which also serves as a post o ...
; to evade detection by automatic e-mail scanners that follow all links on a page to scan for malware, this variant was designed to require users to visit a web page and enter a
CAPTCHA
A CAPTCHA ( , a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart") is a type of challenge–response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human.
The term was coined in 2003 ...
code before the payload is actually downloaded, preventing such automated processes from being able to scan the payload.
Symantec determined that these new variants, which it identified as ''CryptoLocker.F'', were again, unrelated to the original CryptoLocker due to differences in their operation.
A notable victim of the Trojans was the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the national broadcaster of Australia. It is principally funded by direct grants from the Australian Government and is administered by a government-appointed board. The ABC is a publicly-own ...
; live programming on its television
news channel
News broadcasting is the medium of broadcasting various news events and other information via television, radio, or the internet in the field of broadcast journalism. The content is usually either produced locally in a radio studio or televis ...
ABC News 24
ABC News (formerly ABC News 24; also referred to as the ABC News channel) is an Australian 24-hour news cycle, 24-hour News broadcasting, news channel launched and owned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The channel replaced the forme ...
was disrupted for half an hour and shifted to
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
studios due to a CryptoWall infection on computers at its
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
studio.
Another Trojan in this wave,
TorrentLocker, initially contained a design flaw comparable to CryptoDefense; it used the same
keystream In cryptography, a keystream is a stream of random or pseudorandom characters that are combined with a plaintext message to produce an encrypted message (the ciphertext).
The "characters" in the keystream can be bits, bytes, numbers or actual chara ...
for every infected computer, making the encryption trivial to overcome. However, this flaw was later fixed.
By late-November 2014, it was estimated that over 9,000 users had been infected by TorrentLocker in Australia alone, trailing only Turkey with 11,700 infections.
CryptoWall
Another major ransomware Trojan targeting Windows, CryptoWall, first appeared in 2014. One strain of CryptoWall was distributed as part of a
malvertising
Malvertising (a portmanteau of "malicious software (malware) advertising") is the use of online advertising to spread malware. It typically involves injecting malicious or malware-laden advertisements into legitimate online advertising networks ...
campaign on the
Zedo
Zedo (trademark styled as ZEDO) is a US and India-based advertising technology company that provides several online advertising products and services to Internet publishers, advertisers, and agencies. The company was founded in 1999 by Roy de Sou ...
ad network in late-September 2014 that targeted several major websites; the ads redirected to rogue websites that used browser plugin exploits to download the payload. A
Barracuda Networks
Barracuda Networks, Inc. is a company providing security, networking and storage products based on network appliances and cloud services. The company's security products include products for protection against email, web surfing, web hackers ...
researcher also noted that the payload was signed with a
digital signature
A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature, where the prerequisites are satisfied, gives a recipient very high confidence that the message was created b ...
in an effort to appear trustworthy to security software.
CryptoWall 3.0 used a payload written in
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...
as part of an email attachment, which downloads executables disguised as JPG images. To further evade detection, the malware creates new instances of explorer.exe and svchost.exe to communicate with its servers. When encrypting files, the malware also deletes volume shadow copies and installs spyware that steals passwords and Bitcoin wallets.
The FBI reported in June 2015 that nearly 1,000 victims had contacted the bureau's Internet Crime Complaint Center to report CryptoWall infections, and estimated losses of at least $18 million.
The most recent version, CryptoWall 4.0, enhanced its code to avoid antivirus detection, and encrypts not only the data in files but also the file names.
Fusob
Fusob is one of the major mobile ransomware families. Between April 2015 and March 2016, about 56 percent of accounted mobile ransomware was Fusob.
Like a typical mobile ransomware, it employs scare tactics to extort people to pay a ransom.
The program pretends to be an accusatory authority, demanding the victim to pay a fine from $100 to $200 United States Dollar, USD or otherwise face a fictitious charge. Rather surprisingly, Fusob suggests using iTunes gift cards for payment. Also, a timer clicking down on the screen adds to the users’ anxiety as well.
In order to infect devices, Fusob Trojan (computing), masquerades as a pornographic video player. Thus, victims, thinking it is harmless, unwittingly download Fusob.
When Fusob is installed, it first checks the language used in the device. If it uses Russian or certain Eastern European languages, Fusob does nothing. Otherwise, it proceeds on to lock the device and demand ransom. Among victims, about 40% of them are in Germany with the United Kingdom and the United States following with 14.5% and 11.4% respectively.
Fusob has lots in common with Small, which is another major family of mobile ransomware. They represented over 93% of mobile ransomware between 2015 and 2016.
WannaCry
In May 2017, the WannaCry ransomware attack spread through the Internet, using an exploit vector named EternalBlue, which was allegedly leaked from the U.S. National Security Agency. The ransomware attack, unprecedented in scale,
infected more than 230,000 computers in over 150 countries,
using 20 different languages to demand money from users using
Bitcoin
Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...
cryptocurrency. WannaCry demanded US$300 per computer.
The attack affected Telefónica and several other large companies in Spain, as well as parts of the British National Health Service (NHS), where at least 16 hospitals had to turn away patients or cancel scheduled operations,
FedEx, Deutsche Bahn, Honda,
Renault, as well as the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Russia), Russian Interior Ministry and Russian telecom MegaFon.
The attackers gave their victims a 7-day deadline from the day their computers got infected, after which the encrypted files would be deleted.
Petya
Petya was first discovered in March 2016; unlike other forms of encrypting ransomware, the malware aimed to infect the
master boot record, installing a payload which encrypts the file tables of the NTFS file system the next time that the infected system boots, blocking the system from booting into Windows at all until the ransom is paid. Check Point reported that despite what it believed to be an innovative evolution in ransomware design, it had resulted in relatively-fewer infections than other ransomware active around the same time frame.
On 27 June 2017, a heavily modified version of Petya was used for a global cyberattack primarily targeting Ukraine (but affecting many countries
). This version had been modified to propagate using the same EternalBlue exploit that was used by WannaCry. Due to another design change, it is also unable to actually unlock a system after the ransom is paid; this led to security analysts speculating that the attack was not meant to generate illicit profit, but to simply cause disruption.
Bad Rabbit
On 24 October 2017, some users in Russia and Ukraine reported a new ransomware attack, named "Bad Rabbit", which follows a similar pattern to WannaCry and Petya by encrypting the user's file tables and then demands a Bitcoin payment to decrypt them. ESET believed the ransomware to have been distributed by a bogus update to Adobe Flash software.
Among agencies that were affected by the ransomware were: Interfax, Odesa International Airport, Kyiv Metro, and the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine.
As it used corporate network structures to spread, the ransomware was also discovered in other countries, including Turkey, Germany, Poland, Japan, South Korea, and the United States.
Experts believed the ransomware attack was tied to the Petya attack in Ukraine (especially because Bad Rabbit's code has many overlapping and analogical elements to the code of Petya/NotPetya,
appending to CrowdStrike Bad Rabbit and NotPetya's DLL (dynamic link library) share 67 percent of the same code
) though the only identity to the culprits are the names of characters from the ''Game of Thrones'' series embedded within the code.
Security experts found that the ransomware did not use the EternalBlue exploit to spread, and a simple method to inoculate an unaffected machine running older Windows versions was found by 24 October 2017.
Further, the sites that had been used to spread the bogus Flash updating have gone offline or removed the problematic files within a few days of its discovery, effectively killing off the spread of Bad Rabbit.
SamSam
In 2016, a new strain of ransomware emerged that was targeting WildFly, JBoss servers.
This strain, named "SamSam (malware), SamSam", was found to bypass the process of phishing or illicit downloads in favor of exploiting vulnerabilities on weak servers.
The malware uses a Remote Desktop Protocol brute-force attack to guess weak passwords until one is broken. The virus has been behind attacks on government and healthcare targets, with notable hacks occurring against the town of Farmington, New Mexico, the Colorado Department of Transportation, Davidson County, North Carolina, and most recently, a Atlanta government ransomware attack, ransomware attack on the infrastructure of Atlanta.
Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri (born in Qom, Iran in 1991) and Faramarz Shahi Savandi (born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1984) are wanted by the FBI for allegedly launching SamSam ransomware.
The two have allegedly made $6 million from extortion and caused over $30 million in damages using the malware.
DarkSide
On May 7, 2021 a cyberattack was executed on the US Colonial Pipeline. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
identified DarkSide (hacking group), DarkSide as the perpetrator of the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, perpetrated by malicious code, that led to a voluntary shutdown of the main pipeline supplying 45% of fuel to the East Coast of the United States. The attack was described as the worst cyberattack to date on U.S. critical infrastructure. DarkSide successfully extorted about 75
Bitcoin
Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...
(almost US$5 million) from Colonial Pipeline. U.S. officials are investigating whether the attack was purely criminal or took place with the involvement of the Russian government or another state sponsor. Following the attack, DarkSide posted a statement claiming that "We are apolitical, we do not participate in geopolitics...Our goal is to make money and not creating problems for society."
On May 10
SentinelOne published an analysisof the DarkSide Ransomware attack.
In May 2021, the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a joint alert urging the owners and operators of critical infrastructure to take certain steps to reduce their vulnerability to DarkSide ransomware and ransomware in general.
Syskey
Syskey is a utility that was included with Windows NT-based operating systems to encrypt the Security Account Manager, user account database, optionally with a password. The tool has sometimes been effectively used as ransomware during technical support scams—where a caller with remote access to the computer may use the tool to lock the user out of their computer with a password known only to them.
Syskey was removed from later versions of Windows 10 and Windows Server in 2017, due to being obsolete and "known to be used by hackers as part of ransomware scams".
Ransomware-as-a-service
Ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) became a notable method after the Russia-based or Russian-speaking group REvil staged operations against several targets, including the Brazil-based JBS S.A. cyberattack, JBS S.A. in May 2021, and the US-based Kaseya VSA ransomware attack, Kaseya Limited in July 2021. After a July 9, 2021 phone call between United States president Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin, Biden told the press, "I made it very clear to him that the United States expects when a ransomware operation is coming from his soil even though it’s not sponsored by the state, we expect them to act if we give them enough information to act on who that is." Biden later added that the United States would take the group's servers down if Putin did not. Four days later, REvil websites and other infrastructure vanished from the internet.
Mitigation
If an attack is suspected or detected in its early stages, it takes some time for encryption to take place; immediate removal of the malware (a relatively simple process) before it has completed would stop further damage to data, without salvaging any already lost.
Security experts have suggested precautionary measures for dealing with ransomware. Using software or other security policies to block known payloads from launching will help to prevent infection, but will not protect against all attacks
As such, having a proper backup solution is a critical component to defending against ransomware. Note that, because many ransomware attackers will not only encrypt the victim's live machine but it will also attempt to delete any hot backups stored locally or on accessible over the network on a Network-attached storage, NAS, it's also critical to maintain "offline" backups of data Storage security, stored in locations inaccessible from any potentially infected computer, such as external storage drives or devices that Air gap (networking), do not have any access to any network (including the Internet), prevents them from being accessed by the ransomware. Moreover, if using a NAS or Cloud storage, then the computer should have append-only permission to the destination storage, such that it cannot delete or overwrite previous backups. According to Comodo Group, comodo, applying two Attack Surface Reduction on Operating system, OS/Kernel (operating system), Kernel provides a materially-reduced attack surface which results in a heightened security posture.
Installing security patch (computing), updates issued by software vendors can mitigate the Vulnerability (computing), vulnerabilities leveraged by certain strains to propagate.
Other measures include cyber hygiene − exercising caution when opening e-mail attachments and links, network segmentation, and keeping critical computers isolated from networks.
Furthermore, to mitigate the spread of ransomware measures of infection control can be applied.
Such may include disconnecting infected machines from all networks, educational programs,
effective communication channels, malware surveillance and ways of collective participation
File system defenses against ransomware
A number of file systems keep snapshots of the data they hold, which can be used to recover the contents of files from a time prior to the ransomware attack in the event the ransomware does not disable it.
:* On Windows, the Volume shadow copy (VSS) is often used to store backups of data; ransomware often targets these snapshots to prevent recovery and therefore it is often advisable to disable user access to the user tool ''VSSadmin.exe'' to reduce the risk that ransomware can disable or delete past copies.
:*On Windows 10, users can add specific directories or files to Controlled Folder Access in Windows Defender to protect them from ransomware.
It is advised to add backup and other important directories to Controlled Folder Access.
:* Unless malware gains root on the ZFS host system in deploying an attack coded to issue ZFS administrative commands, file servers running ZFS are broadly immune to ransomware, because ZFS is capable of snapshotting even a large file system many times an hour, and these snapshots are immutable (read only) and easily rolled back or files recovered in the event of data corruption.
In general, only an administrator can delete (but cannot modify) snapshots.
File decryption and recovery
There are a number of tools intended specifically to decrypt files locked by ransomware, although successful recovery may not be possible.
If the same encryption key is used for all files, decryption tools use files for which there are both uncorrupted backups and encrypted copies (a known-plaintext attack in the jargon of cryptanalysis. But it only works when the cipher the attacker used was weak to begin with, being vulnerable to known-plaintext attack); recovery of the key, if it is possible, may take several days.
Free ransomware decryption tools can help decrypt files encrypted by the following forms of ransomware: AES_NI, Alcatraz Locker, Apocalypse, BadBlock, Bart, BTCWare, Crypt888, CryptoMix, CrySiS, EncrypTile, FindZip, Globe, Hidden Tear, Jigsaw, LambdaLocker, Legion, NoobCrypt, Stampado, SZFLocker, TeslaCrypt, XData.
The No More Ransom Project is an initiative by the National Police Corps (Netherlands), Netherlands' police's National High Tech Crime Unit, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, Kaspersky Lab and
McAfee
McAfee Corp. ( ), formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American global computer security software company head ...
to help ransomware victims recover their data without paying a ransom. They offer a free CryptoSheriff tool to analyze encrypted files and search for decryption tools.
In addition, old copies of files may exist on the disk, which has been previously deleted. In some cases, these deleted versions may still be recoverable using Data recovery#List of data recovery software, software designed for that purpose.
Growth
Ransomware malicious software was first confined to one or two countries in Eastern Europe and subsequently spread across the Atlantic to the United States and Canada.
The number of cyberattacks during 2020 was double that of 2019.
The first versions of this type of malware used various techniques to disable the computers
by locking the victims system machine (Locker Ransomware) [133]. Ransomware uses different tactics to extort victims. One of the most common methods is locking the device's screen by displaying a message from a branch of local law enforcement alleging that the victim must pay a fine for illegal activity. The ransomware may request a payment by sending an SMS message to a premium rate number. Some similar variants of the malware display pornographic image content and demanded payment for the removal of it.
In 2016, a significant uptick in ransomware attacks on hospitals was noted. According to the 2017 Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec Corp, ransomware affected not only IT systems but also patient care, clinical operations, and billing. Online criminals may be motivated by the money available and sense of urgency within the healthcare system.
Ransomware is growing rapidly across the internet users but also for the IoT environment.
The big problem is that millions of dollars are lost by some organizations and industries that have decided to pay, such as the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center and the MedStar Health.
According to Symantec 2019 ISTR report, for the first time since 2013, in 2018 there was an observed decrease in ransomware activity with a drop of 20 percent. Before 2017, consumers were the preferred victims, but in 2017 this changed dramatically, it moved to the enterprises. In 2018 this path accelerated with 81 percent infections which represented a 12 percent increase.
The common distribution method today is based on email campaigns.
The first reported death following a ransomware attack was at a German hospital in October 2020.
An effective and successful cyber awareness training program must be sponsored from the top of the organization with supporting policies and procedures which effectively outline ramifications of non-compliance, frequency of training and a process for acknowledgement of training. Without sponsorship from the “C-level” executives the training cannot be ignored. Other factors that are key to a successful Cyber Awareness Training program is to establish a baseline identifying the level of knowledge of the organization to establish where the users are in their knowledge prior to training and after. Whichever approach an organization decides to implement, it is important that the organization has policies and procedures in place that provide training that is up to date, performed frequently and has the backing of the entire organization from the top down.
Investment in technology to detect and stop these threats must be maintained, but along with that we need to remember and focus on our weakest link, which is the user.
Criminal arrests and convictions
Zain Qaiser
A British student, Zain Qaiser, from Barking, London was jailed for more than six years at Kingston Crown Court for his ransomware attacks in 2019.
He is said to have been "the most prolific cyber criminal to be sentenced in the UK". He became active when he was only 17. He contacted the Russian controller of one of the most powerful attacks, believed to be the Lurk malware gang, and arranged for a split of his profits. He also contacted online criminals from China and the US to move the money. For about one and a half years, he posed as a legitimate supplier of online promotions of book advertising on some of the world's most visited legal pornography websites. Each of the adverts that was promoted on the websites contained the FBI MoneyPak Ransomware, Reveton Ransomware strain of the malicious Angler Exploit Kit (AEK)
that seized control of the machine. Investigators discovered about £700,000 of earnings, although his network may have earned more than £4m. He may have hidden some money using cryptocurrencies. The ransomware would instruct victims to buy MoneyPak, GreenDot MoneyPak vouchers, and enter the code in the Reveton panel displayed on the screen. This money entered a MoneyPak account managed by Qaiser, who would then deposit the voucher payments into an American co-conspirator's debit card—that of Raymond Odigie Uadiale, who was then a student at Florida International University during 2012 and 2013 and later worked for Microsoft. Uadiale would convert the money into Liberty Reserve digital currency and deposit it into Qaiser's Liberty Reserve account.
A breakthrough in this case occurred in May 2013 when authorities from several countries seized the Liberty Reserve servers, obtaining access to all its transactions and account history. Qaiser was running encrypted virtual machines on his Macbook Pro with both Mac and Windows operating systems.
["How police caught the UK's most notorious porn ransomware baron"](_blank)
Matt Burgess, ''Wired'', 12 Apr 2019] He could not be tried earlier because he was sectioned under the UK Mental Health Act at Goodmayes Hospital (where he was found to be using the hospital Wi-Fi to access his advertising sites.) His lawyer claimed that Qaiser had suffered from mental illness.
Russian police arrested 50 members of the Lurk malware gang in June 2016.
Uadiale, a naturalized US citizen of Nigerian descent, was jailed for 18 months.
Freedom of speech challenges and criminal punishment
The publication of proof-of-concept attack code is common among academic researchers and vulnerability researchers.
It teaches the nature of the threat, conveys the gravity of the issues, and enables countermeasures to be devised and put into place. However, lawmakers with the support of law-enforcement bodies are contemplating making the creation of ransomware illegal. In the state of Maryland, the original draft of HB 340 made it a felony to create ransomware, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
However, this provision was removed from the final version of the bill.
A minor in Japan was arrested for creating and distributing ransomware code.
Young and
Yung have had the ANSI C source code to a ransomware cryptotrojan on-line, at cryptovirology.com, since 2005 as part of a
cryptovirology
Cryptovirology refers to the use of cryptography to devise particularly powerful malware, such as ransomware and asymmetric backdoors. Traditionally, cryptography and its applications are defensive in nature, and provide privacy, authentication, ...
book being written. The source code to the cryptotrojan is still live on the Internet and is
associated with a draft of Chapter 2.
See also
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
Incidents of Ransomware on the Rise–
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
{{Good article
Ransomware,
Types of malware
Security breaches