The striking rise in ransom-ware discovered. With the rapid development in technology day-by-day, cyber-thieves are also devising innovative and sophisticated techniques to penetrate our systems and anyhow hack our valuable information. Increase in cases of ransom-ware reported by a security researcher in 2016, which is the latest new way for hackers proves this proposition.
Researchers say that the adoption of ransom-ware by hackers has increased at an alarming rate and the increase in the use of network infrastructure for ransom-ware stands at a whopping 3500% in 2016 which is a very troubling situation. This rise is due in no small amount of money made by hackers with this new technique.
Ransomware is malicious software that encrypts the data in a user/victim’s PC and then demands certain payments for restoring them into the previous state. The costs for such cases vary according to individual and business cases where amounts may range from few hundreds to a few thousand dollars or pounds etc.
Mr. Raj Samani, European Technology head for Intel Security said that ransomware malware cases are rising at an alarming rate with no signs of stopping. He blamed such rise on the appearance of freely available source code for ransomware. Hackers are attracted to it as it is easy to use, with low risk and high reward, said Mr. Bart Parys a security researcher working on this kind of malware. Mr. Parys and his associates have now identified 124 separate variants of ransom-ware.
Attackers use tricks to avoid being detected while using ransom-ware thus boosting the chances of a person falling victim to it, said Mr. Tomer Weingarten, founder of Sentinel One a security company. His company has seen hackers use well-known traditional techniques as well as new innovative tricks to attract people to their traps. Mostly a ransom-ware reaches its victim via spear-phishing campaigns or booby-trapped advertisements, but others also use specific codes that make files look gentle and harmless.
