Sufferers of ransomware attacks have gave more than $25 Million in ransom money for the period of past 2 Years. This was revealed in a survey carried out by scientists from Chainalysis, Google, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and UC San Diego.
The scientists made a complete picture of the ransomware bionetwork by keeping an eye on these transactions. They then compared them with other recognized samples. The survey tracked 34 people of ransomware to track down transactions made by sufferers of the attacks. It was then discovered that a handful sprains of ransomware take in huge piece of the profit to the hackers.
Locky ransomware was first found in beginning of last year. It allegedly raised transactions worth almost $7 Million from sufferers.
Locky has also been stated to be the first malware that has an individual encryption and payment structure, and an individual group was sharing the malware. This is viewed as a huge contributing reason resulting to the quicker spread of this malware than other programs. The founders of Locky are also claimed to have traded the malicious malware.
On the other hand, the pattern followed by Locky became famous with other sprains as well. CryptXXX and Ceber followed a very analogous pattern, and are claimed to have taken in $1.9 Million and $6.9 Million in transactions, respectively.
In the past couple of years, attacks of ransomware have turned out to be quite ordinary. Once ransomware strikes a computer, it encrypts all the data of an individual with a private key that is in custody of attacker(s) only. In other words, these attacks on the system hostage hold the data, denying to let them go.
The attackers then ask for transaction in Bitcoin valued thousands of dollars to make the computer right again. There have also been circumstances where attackers bully to delete all the data on the computer if the ransom is not given within a particular time period. Ransomware attacks have proved to be well-liked amongst cyber attackers, symbolizing that they are money-making for them.
For now, we can only ask you to be more cautious since the danger still persists.