Robert Gren was working from home on Friday when , all of a sudden , his laptop stopped working . What he initially thought was just a kink in his computer ’ s software was in fact part of a global ransomware attack Attack.Ransom that has affected more than 200,000 computers and caused untold havoc from China to Britain . Now , Mr. Gren and the thousands of other victims worldwide face an agonizing choice : either hand over the ransom Attack.Ransom — a figure that has climbed to $ 600 for each affected machine — by a deadline this Friday , or potentially lose their digital information , including personal photos , hospital patient records and other priceless data , forever . “ I ’ m pretty devastated , ” said Mr. Gren , 32 , a manager of an online entertainment business in Krakow , Poland , who has spent almost all of his waking hours since Friday looking for ways to reclaim his digital data . “ I ’ ve lost private files that I have no other way of recovering . For me , the damage has been huge. ” That decision has become even more difficult as cybersecurity experts and law enforcement officials have repeatedly warned people against paying the ransom Attack.Ransom ahead of this week ’ s deadline . Aside from dissuading victims from handing over money Attack.Ransom that may help fund further such attacks , they caution that it is not guaranteed the attackers will return control of people ’ s computers even if they pay Attack.Ransom the assailants in bitcoin , a digital currency favored in such ransomware attacks Attack.Ransom that can be difficult to trace . Officials also note that the attackers , who have yet to been named , have provided only three bitcoin addresses — similar to a traditional bank routing number — for all global victims to deposit the ransom Attack.Ransom , so it may prove difficult to know who has paid the digital fees Attack.Ransom . This haphazard planning has led many victims to hold off paying Attack.Ransom , at least until they can guarantee they will get their data back . So far , roughly $ 80,000 has been deposited Attack.Ransom into the bitcoin addresses linked to the attack Attack.Ransom , according to Elliptic , a company that tracks online financial transactions involving virtual currencies . F-Secure , a Finnish cybersecurity firm , has confirmed that some of the 200 individuals that it had identified , who had paid the ransom Attack.Ransom , had successfully had their files decrypted . Yet that represented a small fraction of those affected , and the company said it still remained unlikely that people would regain control of their computers if they paid the online fee Attack.Ransom . The tally of ransom payments Attack.Ransom may rise ahead of Friday ’ s deadline , but cybersecurity experts say the current numbers — both total ransom money paid Attack.Ransom and machines decrypted — are far short of early estimates forecasting that the digital attack may eventually cost victims hundreds of millions of dollars in combined ransom fees Attack.Ransom . “ I predict this may be an epic failure , ” said Kim Peretti , a former senior litigator in the Department of Justice ’ s computer crime and intellectual property division who now is co-chairwoman of the cybersecurity preparedness and response team at Alston & Bird , an international law firm . “ Because of the publicity of this attack and the public ’ s awareness of people potentially not getting their files back , the figures aren ’ t as high as people had first thought. ” For victims of such attacks , the potential loss of personal or business files can be traumatic . In typical ransomware cases , including the most recent hack , assailants send Attack.Phishing an encrypted email to potential targets . The message includes a malware attachment that takes over their machines if opened . The attackers then demand payment Attack.Ransom before returning control of the computers , often through money paid into bitcoin or other largely untraceable online currencies .

Three months on from the global WannaCry cyberattack Attack.Ransom , someone has withdrawn funds acquired when victims paid ransoms Attack.Ransom . Almost three months on from the WannaCry ransomware outbreak Attack.Ransom , those behind the global cyberattack Attack.Ransom have finally cashed out their ransom payments Attack.Ransom . The WannaCry epidemic hit Attack.Ransom organisations around the world in May , with the file-encrypting malware -- which used a leaked NSA exploit -- attacking Attack.Ransom Windows systems . It infected over 300,000 PCs and crippling systems across the Americas , Europe , Russia , and China . The UK 's National Health Service was particularly badly hit Attack.Ransom by the attack Attack.Ransom , with hospitals and doctor 's surgeries knocked offline , and some services not restored until days after the ransomware hit Attack.Ransom . WannaCry continued to claim victims even after the initial outbreak : June saw Honda forced to shut down a factory due to an infection and speed cameras in Victoria , Australia also fell victim to the ransomware . While the attack Attack.Ransom was certainly high profile , mistakes in the code meant many victims of WannaCry Attack.Ransom were able to successfully unlock systems without giving into the demands Attack.Ransom of hackers . A bot tracking ransom payments Attack.Ransom says only 338 victims paid Attack.Ransom the $ 300 bitcoin ransom demand Attack.Ransom - not exactly a large haul for an attack which infected hundreds of thousands of computers . In the months since the attack Attack.Ransom , the bitcoin wallets containing the money extorted Attack.Ransom by WannaCry were left untouched , but August 3 saw them suddenly start to be emptied . At the time of withdrawal , the value of the wallets totalled $ 140,000 thanks to changes in the valuation of bitcoin . Three separate withdrawals between 7.3 bitcoin ( $ 20,055 ) and 9.67 bitcoin ( $ 26,435 ) were made in the space of a minute at 4:10am BST , accounting for around half of the total value of the extorted funds . Five minutes later , three more withdrawals of between seven bitcoin ( $ 19.318 ) and 10 Bitcoin ( $ 27,514 ) were made in the space of another 60 seconds . Ten minutes later , a final withdrawal was made , emptying the remaining bitcoin from the WannaCry wallets . There 's no official confirmation of who carried out the attack , but both private cybersecurity firms and investigating government agencies have pointed to North Korea as the culprit . A month after WannaCry Attack.Ransom , companies around the world found themselves being hit Attack.Ransom by another fast-spreading cyberattack in the form of Petya , which like WannaCry is still causing issues for some of those affected . Unfortunately , the success of WannaCry and Petya infection rates means many cybercriminal groups are attempting to copy the worm-like features of these viruses for their own ends .

A Tor proxy service is being used by crooks to divert ransom payments Attack.Ransom to their own accounts at the expense of ransomware distributors -- and their victims , according to security researchers . Ransomware distributors expecting an easy payday are having their illicit earnings stolen by other cybercriminals , who are hijacking the ransom payments Attack.Ransom before they 're received and redirecting them into their own bitcoin wallets . But not only are the attacks giving criminals a taste of their own medicine in becoming victims of cyber-theft , they are also preventing ransomware victims from unlocking their encrypted files -- because , as far as those distributing the malware are concerned , they never received their ransom payment Attack.Ransom . Uncovered by researchers at Proofpoint , it 's believed to be the first scheme of its kind , with cybercriminals using a Tor proxy browser to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks to steal the cryptocurrency payments , which victims of ransomware are attempting to send Attack.Ransom to their attackers . The attacks take advantage of the way ransomware distributors request Attack.Ransom victims to use Tor to buy the cryptocurrency they need to make the ransom payment Attack.Ransom . While many ransomware notes provide instructions on how to download and run the Tor browser , others provide links to a Tor proxy -- regular websites that translate Tor traffic into normal web traffic -- so the process of paying Attack.Ransom is as simple as possible for the victim . However , one of the Tor gateways being used is altering bitcoin wallet addresses in the proxy , and redirecting the payment Attack.Ransom into other accounts , rather than those of the ransomware attacker . Meanwhile , those behind Magniber ransomware appear to have moved to combat bitcoin address replacement by splitting the HTML source code of wallets into four parts , thus making it harder for proxies to find the address to change . While the sums of bitcoin stolen do n't represent a spectacular haul , the interception attacks do create problems for ransomware distributors -- and their victims . The victims are the ultimate losers in this scenario . Not only are they paying Attack.Ransom hundreds or even thousands of dollars to in ransom demands Attack.Ransom , they 're not even getting their files back in return because the man-in-the-middle attacks mean the ransomware distributors do n't think they 've been paid Attack.Ransom .

The murky ecosystem of ransomware payments Attack.Ransom comes into focus in new research led by Damon McCoy , an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering . Ransomware attacks Attack.Ransom , which encrypt and hold a computer user 's files hostage in exchange for payment Attack.Ransom , extort Attack.Ransom millions of dollars from individuals each month , and comprise one of the fastest-growing forms of cyber attack . In a paper slated for presentation at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in May , McCoy and a team including researchers from the University of California , San Diego ; Princeton University ; Google ; and the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis provide the first detailed account of the ransomware payment ecosystem , from initial attack to cash-out . Key findings include the discovery that South Koreans are disproportionately impacted Attack.Ransom by ransomware campaigns , with analysis revealing that $ 2.5 million of the $ 16 million in ransomware payments Attack.Ransom tracked by the researchers was paid Attack.Ransom in South Korea . The paper 's authors call for additional research to determine the reason that so many South Koreans are victimized and how they can be protected . The team also found that most ransomware operators used a Russian bitcoin exchange , BTC-E , to convert bitcoin to fiat currencies . ( BTC-E has since been seized by the FBI . ) The researchers estimate that at least 20,000 individuals made ransomware payments Attack.Ransom over the past two years , at a confirmed cost of $ 16 million , although the actual payment total is likely far higher . McCoy and his collaborators took advantage of the public nature of the bitcoin blockchain technology to trace ransom payments Attack.Ransom over a two-year period¬ . Bitcoins are the most common currency of ransomware payments Attack.Ransom , and because most victims do not own them , the initial bitcoin purchase provides a starting point for tracking payments . Each ransomware victim is often given a unique payment address that directs to a bitcoin wallet where the ransom Attack.Ransom is collected . The research team tapped public reports of ransomware attacks Attack.Ransom to identify these addresses and correlate them with blockchain transactions . To boost the number of transactions available for analysis , the team also executed real ransomware binaries in a controlled experimental environment , essentially becoming victims themselves and making micropayments to real ransom wallets in order to follow the bitcoin trail . `` Ransomware operators ultimately direct bitcoin to a central account that they cash out periodically , and by injecting a little bit of our own money into the larger flow we could identify those central accounts , see the other payments flowing in , and begin to understand the number of victims and the amount of money being collected , '' McCoy said . The research team acknowledged that ethical issues prevent exploration of certain aspects of the ransomware ecosystem , including determining the percentage of victims who actually pay Attack.Ransom to recover their files . McCoy explained that despite having the ability to check for activity connected to a specific payment address , doing so would effectively `` start the clock '' and potentially cause victims to either pay a double ransom Attack.Ransom or lose the opportunity to recover their files altogether . Criminal use of cryptocurrencies is one of McCoy 's research focuses . He and fellow researchers previously tracked human traffickers through their use of Bitcoin advertising .

IBM ’ s latest X-Force Threat Intelligence Index report reveals that more than 2.9 billion records were leaked Attack.Databreach through publicly disclosed incidents in 2017 . While that sounds horribly bad , there ’ s a bright side to this stormy disclosure : the number is 25 percent lower than the amount of records leaked Attack.Databreach in 2016 . Why ? Because hackers are shifting over to ransomware . They ’ re becoming more focused on holding files hostage for money than on unleashing all that data to the dark markets . According to IBM , this shift to ransomware cost corporations more than $ 8 billion globally during 2017 , a number derived from downtime , ransom payments Attack.Ransom , and other impacts on day-to-day business . The global logistics and transportation industries alone lost “ millions of dollars ” in revenue during 2017 due to ransomware attacks Attack.Ransom . Ransomware is a type of malware that infiltrates a network and encrypts files on connected PCs . These files become unrecoverable , and require a “ key ” generated by the hacker to be released from captivity . These keys are provided after a payment using cryptocurrency , adding to the overall cost corporations incur due to downtime . Hiring a third party to recover the files may or may not work , depending on the level of encryption . “ With the potentially irreversible encryption lock of crypto-ransomware , victims without up-to-date backups often choose to pay the ransom Attack.Ransom their attackers demand Attack.Ransom , ” the report states . “ Losing one ’ s files on personal devices may cost a few hundred dollars , but that effect extends much further for organizations where infected users could cause the company to lose massive amounts of data , and possibly to have to pay Attack.Ransom the criminals considerable sums of money to get it back. ” The report reveals that many organizations keep cryptocurrency on hand so they can resolve the problem quickly and reduce costly downtime . Law enforcement agencies discourage payments Attack.Ransom to hackers , but the rising ransomware “ epidemic ” is getting to the point where it may potentially cost corporations across the globe more than $ 11.5 billion annually by 2019 , according to research by Cybersecurity Ventures . Malware , by contrast , values leaked personal data over the potential financial gain of locking sensitive data on corporate networks .

An attack called Mongo Lock is targeting remotely accessible and unprotected MongoDB databases , wiping them , and then demanding a ransom Attack.Ransom in order to get the contents back . While this new campaign is using a name to identify itself , these types of attacks are not new and MongoDB databases have been targeted for a while now . These hijacks work by attackers scanning the Internet or using services such as Shodan.io to search for unprotected MongoDB servers . Once connected , the attackers may export the databases , delete them , and then create a ransom note explaining how to get the databases back . According to security researcher Bob Diachenko who discovered the new Mongo Lock campaign Attack.Ransom , the attackers will connect to an unprotected database and delete it . In its place , the attackers will leave a new database called `` Warning '' with a collection inside it named `` Readme '' . The Readme collection will contain a ransom note that explains that the database has been encrypted and that the victims need to pay Attack.Ransom them a ransom Attack.Ransom to get it back . In the Mongo Lock campaign Attack.Ransom , as shown below , the attackers do not leave a bitcoin address , but rather direct the victim 's to contact them via email . While the ransom note claims that the attackers are exporting Attack.Databreach the database first before deleting it , it is not known if they are doing that in ever case . Victims are paying ransoms Attack.Ransom When looking up some of the bitcoin addresses used in recent MongoDB attacks , victims have been paying the ransoms Attack.Ransom . For example , the bitcoin address 3FAVraz3ovC1pz4frGRH6XXCuqPSWeh3UH , which has been used often , has had 3 ransom payments Attack.Ransom for a total of 1.8 bitcoins . This is equivalent to a little over $ 11,000 USD at the current value of bitcoins .

There ’ s no question that Friday ’ s WannaCry ransomware attack Attack.Ransom , which spread like wildfire , was bad . Its ability to spread like a worm by exploiting a Microsoft vulnerability was certainly new ground for a ransomware campaign . But along the way , there ’ s been a lot of fear and hype . Perspective is in order . Here ’ s a look at the latest in Sophos ’ investigation , including a recap of how it is protecting customers . From there , we look at how this fits into overall attack trends and how , in the grand scheme of things , this doesn ’ t represent a falling sky . With the code behind Friday ’ s attack in the wild , we should expect copycats to cook up their own campaigns in the coming days to capitalize on the money-making opportunity in front of them . Over the weekend , accounts set up to collect ransom payments Attack.Ransom had received smaller amounts than expected for an attack of this size . But by Monday morning , the balances were on the rise , suggesting that more people were responding to the ransom message Monday . On Saturday , three ransomware-associated wallets had received 92 bitcoin payments Attack.Ransom totaling $ 26,407.85 USD . By Sunday , the number between the three wallets was up to $ 30,706.61 USD . By Monday morning , 181 payments Attack.Ransom had been made totaling 29.46564365 BTC ( $ 50,504.23 USD ) . Analysis seems to confirm that Friday ’ s attack was launched using suspected NSA code leaked by a group of hackers known as the Shadow Brokers . It used a variant of the Shadow Brokers ’ APT EternalBlue Exploit ( CC-1353 ) , and used strong encryption on files such as documents , images , and videos . A perfect attack would self-propagate but would do so slowly , randomly and unpredictably . This one was full throttle , but hardly to its detriment . Here we had something that spread like wildfire , but the machines that were impacted Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability were probably still susceptible to secondary attacks because the underlying vulnerability probably hasn ’ t been patched Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability . The problem is that exploit and payload are separate . The payload went fast and got stopped , but that ’ s just one of an infinite number of possibilities that can spread through the unsolved exploit . Companies still using Windows XP are particularly susceptible to this sort of attack . First launched in 2001 , the operating system is now 16 years old and has been superseded by Windows Vista and Windows 7 , 8 and 10 upgrades . It remains to be seen who was behind this attack . Sophos is cooperating with law enforcement to provide any intelligence it can gather about the origins and attack vectors . The company believes initial infections may have arrived via an email with a malicious payload that a user was tricked Attack.Phishing into opening . Sophos continues to update protections against the threat . Sophos Customers using Intercept X and Sophos EXP products will also see this ransomware blocked by CryptoGuard . Please note that while Intercept X and EXP will block the underlying behavior and restore deleted or encrypted files in all cases we have seen , the offending ransomware splash screen and note may still appear . For updates on the specific strains being blocked , Sophos is continually updating a Knowledge-Base Article on the subject . Meanwhile , everyone is urged to update their Windows environments as described in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS17-010 – Critical . For those using older versions of Windows , Microsoft has provided Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability Customer Guidance for WannaCrypt attacks Attack.Ransom and has made the decision to make the Security Update for platforms in custom support only – Windows XP , Windows 8 , and Windows Server 2003 – broadly available for download Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability . As severe as this attack was , it ’ s important to note that we ’ re not looking at a shift in the overall attack trend . This attack represents a merging of old behaviors into a perfect storm . SophosLabs VP Simon Reed said : This attack demonstrates the opportunistic nature of commercial malware authors to re-use the most powerful of exploit techniques to further their aims , which is ultimately to make money . In the final analysis , the same advice as always applies for those who want to avoid such attacks . To guard against malware exploiting Microsoft vulnerabilities : To guard against ransomware in general : Finally , there ’ s the question of whether victims should pay the ransom Attack.Ransom or stand their ground . Sophos has mostly taken a neutral stance on the issue . In the case of this attack , paying the ransom Attack.Ransom doesn ’ t seem to be helping the victims so far . Therefore , Levy believes paying the WannaCry ransom Attack.Ransom is ill-advised : In general , paying Attack.Ransom is a bad idea unless the organization is truly desperate to get irreplaceable data back and when it is known that the ransom payment Attack.Ransom works . In this attack , it doesn ’ t appear to work . It ’ s been referred to as a ‘ kill switch ’ – that all the malware author had to do to throw the breaks on for some reason was to register some obscure domains . In the event a security researcher found the domains and registered them . He speculates that its not actually a kill switch but may be a form of sandbox detection ( malware wants to run in the real world and hide when it ’ s in a researcher ’ s sandbox . ) The thinking goes that in the kind of sandbox environment used by security researchers the domains might appear to be registered when in fact they are not . If the malware can get a response from the unregistered domains it thinks it ’ s in a sandbox and shuts down . If you blocklist the domains in your network then you ’ re turning off the “ kill switch ” . If you allowlist the domains you ’ re allowing access to the kill switch .

WCry , the National Security Agency exploit-powered ransomware worm that began spreading worldwide on Friday , had reportedly affected hundreds of thousands of computers before the weekend , but the malware had only brought in about $ 20,000 in ransom payments Attack.Ransom . However , as the world returned to the office on Monday , those payments Attack.Ransom have been rapidly mounting , based on tracking data for the three Bitcoin wallets tied by researchers to the malware . As of noon Eastern Time on Monday , payments had reached an estimated $ 71,000 since May 12 . So far , 263 payments have been made to the three wallets linked to the code in the malware . The payment history for each wallet shows individual transactions ranging mostly between 0.16 and 0.34 Bitcoin ( approximately $ 300 and $ 600 , respectively ) , with the number of larger payments increasing over time . Different ransom Attack.Ransom amounts have been presented to victims , and the price of Bitcoin has climbed dramatically over the past week , causing some variation in the payment sizes . According to researchers at Symantec Security Response , tracking ransom Attack.Ransom transactions would have been much more difficult if not for a bug in code that was supposed to create an individual bitcoin wallet for each victim : # WannaCry has code to provide unique bitcoin address for each victim but defaults to hardcoded addresses as a result of race condition bug — Security Response ( @ threatintel ) May 16 , 2017 Because the code failed , it defaulted over the three preset wallets . This , along with the `` killswitch '' code that was left in the initial wave of WCry malware , may be an indication that the malware was n't yet fully tested when it was launched .

For the second time in a week , a major U.S. airline grounded its fleet after its computer systems stopped working . The latest incident involved Delta Air Lines ( NYSE : DAL ) , which canceled 170 flights on Sunday and another 110 on Monday because its `` essential IT systems went down '' over the weekend . The issue at Delta Air Lines alone does n't seem suspicious -- computers fail all the time . But there are two things that could lead one to wonder if there 's more to this than meets the eye . The first is that Delta is n't just some guy like me sitting at home who does n't know a thing about computers . It generates over $ 40 billion worth of revenue each year . The point is , Delta has plenty of resources to ensure that its systems do n't just `` stop working . '' The second piece of the puzzle is that Delta 's issues come one week after a similarly ambiguous glitch brought down the computer system at United Airlines , a subsidiary of United Continental Holdings ( NYSE : UAL ) . Like Delta , United Airlines has tens of thousands of employees and earns tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue . While it 's impossible to say for sure if there 's a connection between these two incidents , as neither company has explained why their computers crashed , there 's reason to be suspicious that they were n't simply innocent failures of technology . In the course of researching cyber-threats to banks , I spoke last week with John Carlin , the former assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice and one-time chief of staff at the FBI . There are few people who know as much about cyber-threats today as Carlin , as is clear if you watch his appearance on The Charlie Rose Show here . Carlin pointed out both to me and to Rose that cyber attacks are waged against the American government and companies all the time . At the FBI , they even have a room with an enormous monitor mounted on the wall that tracks attacks in real time . One of the stories Carlin shared was about the time that the People 's Liberation Army of China was caught routinely hacking into American corporations ' computers to steal Attack.Databreach trade secrets . `` One time they stole Attack.Databreach the pricing information from a solar company so they could price-dump , '' the former law-enforcement officer explained . `` To add insult to injury , when they were sued for doing so , they then stole Attack.Databreach the litigation strategy from [ the solar company ] as well . '' The purpose of the attack was n't to bring down the solar companies ' systems , but those types of intrusions are just as common . Hackers regularly break into systems and then bring them to a halt until the victims make ransom payments Attack.Ransom . Or , in the case of a sustained cyber attack on four dozen U.S. banks from 2011 through 2013 , which was traced back to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard , systems can be disrupted in retaliation for cyber attacks conducted by our own intelligence agencies , as news reports speculated at the time . To get back to Delta Air Lines and United Airlines , then , it does n't seem like an unreasonable stretch of the imagination to assume that the unexplained computer outages at the two companies were n't a coincidence at all , but instead the result of cyber attacks .

However , modern ransomware certainly merits a classification as one of the most evolving sectors of cybercrime in 2017 . Though it is quite difficult to calculate the overall damage caused by ransomware in 2016 , some researchers state that cybercriminals received over $ 1 billion in ransom payments Attack.Ransom last year . Others mention a 3,500 % increase in the criminal use of infrastructure that helps run ransomware campaigns . Carbon Black says that ransomware is the fastest growing malware across industries , up 50 % in 2016 . Technology ( 218 % ) , utilities and energy ( 112 % ) and banking ( 93 % ) saw the highest year-on-year ransomware growth last year . Due to an important lack of qualified technical personnel and other resources , law enforcement agencies are globally unprepared to detect , prevent and prosecute this type of digital crime . Moreover , more and more cases of ransom payment Attack.Ransom by the police have become public , while those police officers who dare to resist take a substantive risk . There is the Texas police who lost eight years of their investigative work and all of the evidence by refusing to pay Attack.Ransom cybercriminals . This sad statistic explains why the majority of despaired victims of cybercrime fail to report it to the law enforcement agencies . Attackers can easily rent a Ransomware-as-a-Service ( RaaS ) infrastructure for as low as $ 39.99 per month , making up to $ 195,000 of monthly profit without much effort in comparison to other niches of digital fraud and crime . The business of ransomware has become so attractive that some cybercriminals don ’ t even bother to actually encrypt the data , but just extort money Attack.Ransom from their victims with fake malware . The victims are so scared by media stories about ransomware , combined with law enforcement agencies ’ inability to protect them or at least to punish the offenders , that they usually pay . The new generation of ransomware attacks Attack.Ransom IoT and smart devices , locking not only mobiles and smart TVs , but also doors in hotels and air conditioning systems in luxury smart houses . Criminals switch from file encryption to database encryption and web applications , demonstrating a great scalability of ransomware tactics . To increase their profits , hacking teams behind the ransomware campaigns now threaten to send the victim ’ s sensitive data to all of their contacts instead of just deleting it . Cryptocurrencies allow attackers to receive online payments almost without any risk of being traced and prosecuted . Despite the media hype around blockchain ’ s ability to reinvent and improve the world , so far only the cybercriminals have entirely leveraged the full potential of this emerging technology . A simple business model , high profits , accessibility and affordability of resources to deploy large-scale attacking campaigns , and low risks in comparison to other sectors of ( cyber ) crime , assure the flourishing future of ransomware . All of this without mentioning the problem of global inequality actually causing the cybercrime , which I briefly described in Forbes recently . Nonetheless , it does not mean that organizations should give up . The FBI confirms the skyrocketing problem of ransomware , but suggests relying on prevention rather than paying ransom Attack.Ransom to the criminals . PwC also suggests to plan and prepare the organization to this kind of incident in order to have internal capabilities to recover without suffering important financial losses . Some cybersecurity vendors , like SentinelOne , contractually guarantee protection and provide a financial insurance for their clients .