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NYT Syndicate
Hackers are discovering that it is more profitable to hold your important data hostage than it is to steal it.
A decade-old internet scourge called ransomware went mainstream last weeky when cybercriminals seized control of computers around the world, from the delivery giant FedEx in the United States to the computers that power Britain's public health system, universities in China and even Russia's powerful Interior Ministry.
Investigators are not yet able to tell who was behind the attack as security experts around the world raced to contain it. Across Asia, several universities and organisations said they had been affected. Renault, the European automaker, said that its French operations had been hit, while one of its plants in Slovakia was shut down because of the digital outbreak.
Computer users in the United States so far were less affected after a 22-year-old British cybersecurity researcher inadvertently stopped the ransomware attack from spreading more widely.
Ransomware is nothing new. For years, there have been stories of individuals or companies horrified that they have been locked out of their computers and that the only way back in is to pay a ransom to someone, somewhere who has managed to take control.
But with the advent of new tools that wrap victims' data with tough encryption technology, hard-to-trace digital currency like bitcoin, and even online sites that offer to do the data ransoming in return for a piece of the action, hackers have become emboldened.
"You don't even need to have any skills to do this anymore," said Jason Rebholz, a senior director at the Crypsis Group who has helped dozens of victims of ransomware.
Ransomware has allowed people who are not computer experts to become computer thieves. It used to be that hackers had to be a little creative and skilled to get money out of people. There were fake anti-virus scams that promised to clean up your computer ” for a fee. Sometimes they resorted to Trojan horse programmes that lie in wait on e-commerce or banking sites, ready to get your credit card numbers. Computer criminals are discovering that ransomware is the most effective way to make money in the shortest amount of time.
It should not have been a shock. As our data has become our lifeline, cybercriminals have elevated their game and their demands. Just five years ago, attackers in Eastern Europe were locking up victims' computers and demanding ransoms of $100 to $400 to unlock them.
But the idea of paying a criminal on the internet was still foreign, and most important, technicians and security experts could find ways to unlock computers without caving on the ransom. In 2012, security experts estimated that fewer than 3 percent of victims paid.
Ransoms now range from as little as one bitcoin, which equates to roughly $1,700, to as many as 30 Bitcoin, nearly $51,000, with the median ransom equating to four bitcoin, or nearly $7,000, according to researchers at the Crypsis Group.
Bitcoin has given cybercriminals an easy and anonymous way to get their profits, and it is much harder to track than credit cards or wire transfers.
Now anyone can visit a webpage, generate a ransomware file with the click of a mouse, encrypt someone's systems and demand a ransom to restore access to the files. If the victim pays, the ransomware provider takes a cut of the payment.
Ransomware criminals also have customer service lines that victims can call to get help paying a ransom. There are even live chat options. And while some amateur ransomware attackers may not restore victims' data once the ransom is paid, the more professional outfits worry that if they do not decrypt a victim's data, their reputation and"business" may suffer as a result, Rebholz said.
The most notorious of these attackers, a group called SamSam after its type of ransomware, is known for demanding the highest ransoms, 25 to 30 bitcoin. But they reliably decrypt a victim's data after being paid.
Most small- to medium-size businesses pay the ransoms because they do not have backups of their data and feel they have no other option, Rebholz said."That data is the bloodline of their business in many cases," he said."They can either go out of business or pay the ransom."
Cybercriminals have also found a soft target in universities, which usually have more open systems that allow for the free flow of information
More recently, they have found a niche in health care,sector. Basically no one is safe.
Nearly half of ransomware attacks begin by persuading an employee to click on an email.
The other half, Rebholz and others said, target victims with"brute force" methods: Hackers scan an organisation for software vulnerabilities, weak passwords or other unlocked digital doors. After that, ransomware attackers try to encrypt as many files as possible. The SamSam group is known to move from file to file, manually encrypting hundreds of systems, so it can demand the highest in Bitcoin ransoms, according to the Crypsis Group, Symantec and others.
