Posted on 12/19/2016 5:28:33 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Ransomware spiked 6,000% in 2016 and most victims paid the hackers, IBM finds
Harriet Taylor 14 Dec 2016
Spam emails loaded with ransomware — malware that scrambles data and demands a ransom to decode it — increased 6,000 percent this year compared with 2015, a new study from IBM Security found. Ransomware was in almost 40 percent of all spam messages in 2016.
The problem is, the business model works: 70 percent of business victims paid the hackers to get their data back, the study found. Of those who paid, 50 percent paid more than $10,000 and 20 percent paid more than $40,000.
Ransomware is on track to be a $1 billion business in 2016, despite the fact that the FBI recommends victims not pay their attackers but contact law enforcement instead.
In 2016 cybercriminals breached the systems of San Francisco's light rail network — which avoided paying because its systems were backed up — and a Hollywood hospital — which was forced to pay $17,000 in bitcoin to retrieve its data.
Hackers are indiscriminate in choosing their victims, targeting individual consumers as well. Almost 40 percent of consumers would be willing to pay more than $100 to get data back. Most ransomware fetches over $300 per victim, according to IBM.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Using ransomeware should be grounds for the death penalty.
“Click here to see hot naked women”
No one would ever fall for that, right?
malwarebytes stops ransomware.... for now.
Otherwise do the following:
These newer ones have a new delivery method now - Javascript attachments. Since most people have the default turned on in Explorer - not to show file extensions - they will name a file something like Invoice.txt.js.
Since the .js extension doesn’t show up, the file looks like Invoice.txt. Most people will assume that is safe to open ( Microsoft doesn’t help matters, because the default icon for a javascript extension resembles a document icon ). People will click on this and it will execute the script, connecting to a download server, fetching the actual ransomware in the form of a Windows program (an .EXE file), and launching it to complete the infection.
The way to counter this is to create a text file with notepad and rename it with the js extension. Then right click on it and tell it to open this with Notepad from then on. Start button> Run and type notepad then click ok.
I have the directions copied in then I go to File> Save as the choose Save as type: All files then type in a file name like stop ransomware.js
This way if one accidentally downloads one of these and clicks on it, it won’t execute.
Your link didn’t work....
LOL!
Cabinet level...
Someone needs to protect the country from cyber attacks, botnets, ransomware and all the other crap our enemies use against us. Gates is smart enough to do the job...
I have an easier method.
I delete anything where I do not know the sender OR even if I do know the sender, if I don’t recognize the topic I delete it.
If its important, it will come back.
Ads at websites have most of the spyware.
At least get Adblock Plus plugin.
For all web browsers. Click on the browser icon you want to install the plugin for.
https://adblockplus.org
I had to help rescue a college that got hit, whete the bastards had started quietly encrypting the tape backups a week in advance before dropping all the volume shadow snapshots and hitting the main NAS. Fortunately I was able to use U-Recover to find a surviving snapshot on a backup staging volume.
Of course, they paid. It’s quicker to pay them than fight them. Five minutes after the pay off, they have their data back. Two seconds later, their customers are charged for the pay off and no skin off the company execs.
If they fought the hackers and threw them in jail, they’d be out the legal costs which is much more than the blackmail. After years of court delays, they still won’t have their data back. It’s a win-win for the hackers and the company to just pay upfront. No one cares the customers lose.
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