Google study warns 'Ransomware is here to stay'

Recent Google research has suggested that in the past two years, $25 million (£19m) has been made by cyber-thieves from ransomware, with the majority of money made in 2016, when gangs realised how lucrative it could be.

As discussed in past posts, Ransomware is a 'malicious software that infects a machine and then encrypts or scrambles files so they can no longer be used or read.' Once these files are encrypted it can be very difficult to get them back. The cyber-thieves state they will only decrypt the files if the victim pays a ransom, however, this is often not the case, despite payment.

Google's Elie Bursztein, who carried out the study along with Kylie McRoberts and Luca Invernizzi, stated, "It's become a very, very profitable market and is here to stay." The study involved Google creating thousands of virtual victims of ransomware to expose how the payment flow worked and to which malware types. Several methods were used to work out how cash flowed to the ransomware creators including seeking out the files used to infect machines to run on thousands of virtual machines to create "synthetic victims". They could monitor where this money would be transferred, highlighting 34 variants of ransomware, with them becoming increasingly popular.

Mr Bursztein added, "It's no longer a game reserved for tech-savvy criminals, it's for almost anyone."

For the more details and further results on the Google study visit the BBC site.
If you're worried about your Ransomware protection plan and would like advice on cyber security please don't hesitate to get in touch.