Difficult to measure the extent of the impact of ransoms paid on the Internet?

To do this, security architect Jack Cable has launched a site to assess ransoms paid in bitcoin across the world to ransomware authors.

The purpose of the Ransomwhere site is to illustrate the extent of the impact of this type of threat.

The point is, ransomware is a very special cyberattack that puts victims in a difficult position. The latter must indeed make a Cartesian choice: pay the ransom and have a chance to recover their data or do nothing and in this case, put an end to it. Unfortunately, if the victim pays, there is no indication that the hackers are in good faith and that they will give them back their access. In addition, payment or not, they may also have made a copy of the data to resell it to others or blackmail their victims. It is therefore quite complicated to advise one or the other solution to a ransomware victim, even though specialists still recommend not to pay the criminals.

“Today, there is no complete public data on the total amounts paid by ransomware.

Without this data, we cannot know the full impact of ransomware, and whether taking certain actions is a game-changer.

Ransomwhere aims to fill this gap, ”Jack Cable wrote on Twitter.

A sad record

Note that the site only lists ransoms paid in Bitcoin, the preferred method of payment by hackers.

The point is that due to their nature, bitcoins exchanged can be tracked since their transactions are public and recorded on the blockchain.

According to data collected by the site, more than $ 46 million was paid to hackers in 2021 alone. This year, Conti malware is the one that raised the most money, with $ 12.7 million.

The hacker group behind the REvil ransomware is in second place with $ 12.4 million.

DarkSide closes the podium with $ 4.6 million in bitcoins.

By having a visual illustrating the impact of ransomware, Jack Cable hopes governments will take proportionate and appropriate action to combat ransomware.

High-Tech

REvil: Ransoms demanded amount to $ 70 million for 1,500 hacked companies

High-Tech

New type of ransomware targets Windows and Linux users

  • Personal data

  • Cybercriminality

  • High-Tech

  • Cyber ​​attack

  • Phishing

  • Computer science

  • Cybersecurity

  • Ransom