Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Malware & Threats

CryptoWall Ransomware Cost Victims More Than $18 Million Since April 2014: FBI

Ransomware is big business.

According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), more than 992 CryptoWall-related complaints were received between April 2014 and June 2015. During that period, victims reported more than $18 million in losses.

Ransomware is big business.

According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), more than 992 CryptoWall-related complaints were received between April 2014 and June 2015. During that period, victims reported more than $18 million in losses.

“The financial impact to victims goes beyond the ransom fee itself, which is typically between $200 and $10,000,” according to the advisory from IC3. “Many victims incur additional costs associated with network mitigation, network countermeasures, loss of productivity, legal fees, IT services, and/or the purchase of credit monitoring services for employees or customers.”

“The problem begins when the victim clicks on an infected advertisement, email, or attachment, or visits an infected website,” the advisory notes. ‘Once the victim’s device is infected with the ransomware variant, the victim’s files become encrypted. In most cases, once the victim pays a ransom fee, he or she regains access to the files that were encrypted. Most criminals involved in ransomware schemes demand payment in Bitcoin. Criminals prefer Bitcoin because it’s easy to use, fast, publicly available, decentralized, and provides a sense of heightened security/anonymity.”

In March, stats from Trend Micro revealed that New Zealand and Australia were home to the most CryptoWall 3.0 infections, with 50.38 percent. North America and Europe were next with 24.18 and 14.27 percent, respectively.

CryptoWall, and ransomware in general, is effective because many people are failing in three areas: keeping their software up-to-date; performing nightly backups of workstations and file servers; and maintaining up-to-date anti-malware software, Kaspersky Lab’s Kurt Baumgartner told SecurityWeek.

“The second one is particularly helpful because ransomware will seek out mapped drives and encrypt files on servers,” said Baumgartner, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab. “I have seen this bad fortune in Colorado at non-profits and small businesses. One employee tries running a cracked software installer that includes embedded ransomware code, and it ends up encrypting the files on a mapped drive the organization considered their “backup.” You can’t recover from that without paying the price – ransomware crypto routines have improved to the point where you can’t just find a side-channel attack to recover files.”

Written By

Marketing professional with a background in journalism and a focus on IT security.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Understand how to go beyond effectively communicating new security strategies and recommendations.

Register

Join us for an in depth exploration of the critical nature of software and vendor supply chain security issues with a focus on understanding how attacks against identity infrastructure come with major cascading effects.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Malware & Threats

The NSA and FBI warn that a Chinese state-sponsored APT called BlackTech is hacking into network edge devices and using firmware implants to silently...

Application Security

Virtualization technology giant VMware on Tuesday shipped urgent updates to fix a trio of security problems in multiple software products, including a virtual machine...

Malware & Threats

Unpatched and unprotected VMware ESXi servers worldwide have been targeted in a ransomware attack exploiting a vulnerability patched in 2021.

Cyberwarfare

An engineer recruited by intelligence services reportedly used a water pump to deliver Stuxnet, which reportedly cost $1-2 billion to develop.

Malware & Threats

Apple’s cat-and-mouse struggles with zero-day exploits on its flagship iOS platform is showing no signs of slowing down.

Cybercrime

No one combatting cybercrime knows everything, but everyone in the battle has some intelligence to contribute to the larger knowledge base.