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Ransomware took in $1 billion in
2016--improved defenses may not be enough to stem the tide
According to a security expert who requested anonymity,
ransomware cybercriminals took in about $1 billion last year
Increased user
awareness of phishing threats,
better antivirus technology, more industry-wide information sharing and
cross-border efforts by law enforcement authorities will combine to turn the
tide against ransomware this year, according to some security experts, but
others expect the attacks to continue to increase.
According to a security expert who requested anonymity, ransomware
cybercriminals took in about $1 billion last year, based on money coming into
ransomware-related Bitcoin wallets.
That includes more than $50 million each for three wallets associated with
the Locky ransomware, and
a fourth one that processed close to $70 million. Cryptowall brought in
close to $100 million before it was shut down this year. CryptXXX gathered in
$73 million during the second half of 2016, and Cerber took in $54
million, the expert said.
Smaller ransomware families brought in another $150 million, and the FBI
has reported $209 million in ransomware payments during the first three months
of 2016. In addition to this $800 million or so in known payments, there are
many other Bitcoin wallets that are unknown to researchers and uncounted,
pushing the estimated total to $1 billion for all of 2016.
"The $1 billion number isn't at all unreasonable and might even be
low," confirmed Mark Nunnikhoven, vice president of cloud research at Trend
Micro.
"It's getting difficult to track the amount of money flowing into
criminals' Bitcoin wallets because they've started to try and hide the
transactions across a large number of wallets," he added.
He said that there was a 400 percent increase in ransomware variants last
year, and he expects to see a 25 percent growth in ransomware families in 2016.
"What we're seeing is a bit of a maturation in how to execute these
attacks, so we're expecting a leveling off to a more realistic growth
curve," he said.
But criminals will continue innovating because of how profitable ransomware
is.
"I don't think we'll see the 100 percent growth that we saw from 2015
to 2016," said Allan Liska, intelligence analyst at Recorded
Future. "I think we'll probably see a 50 percent growth."
The markets for stolen medical records, credit card numbers and email
addresses are collapsing, he said.
"Not only is it taking a while to get paid, but they're not getting
paid as much as they used to," he said.
Meanwhile, ransomware is an easy business to get into, the payout is
immediate, and it offers an ongoing revenue stream.
"There's no incentive for them to discontinue ransomware," he
said.
Some experts expect growth to be even higher.
Successful ransomware attacks will double this year, predicted Tom Bain,
vice president at CounterTack.
"The reality is that every single customer I speak to, anyone in the
industry really, this is their number one concern," he said.
Better defensive technology and collaboration will help, he said, but the
problem is going to get worse before it starts to get better.
Gartner analysts estimate
that there were between 2 million and 3 million successful ransomware attacks
in 2016, and that the frequency will double year over year through 2019.
"I think they're right," said Bain.
But not all experts think the future is quite that bleak.
Raj Samani, vice president and CTO at Intel Security, predicts that
anti-ransomware efforts will begin to pay off in the next few months.
"We'll see a spike earlier on this year, but then I anticipate our
efforts with law enforcement to be successful," he said.
Intel, along with Kaspersky Labs, Europol, and the Dutch National High Tech
Crime Unit formed an alliance this past summer, No
More Ransom. Since then, more than a dozen other law enforcement
agencies have joined up, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Colombia,
France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain,
Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Several other security vendors have also
joined up.
"Now that we've got more law enforcement agencies on board, and more
private sector firms, we expect to see an increase in successful take-down
operations," said Samani.
In addition to working together to bring down ransomware operations, the
group also distributes free anti-ransomware tools.
That, combined with more user awareness about phishing and better detection
technologies, will combine to stop the growth of this attack vector, Samani
said.
"As an industry, we've started to develop new products, sandboxing,
threat intelligence exchanges," he said. "It is getting better."
However, he warned that malware authors do have one significant advantage.
"There's an asymmetry of information," he said. "They have
tools and services that will allow them to run their malware through all the
anti-virus engines out there. They can install our products and they know how
our products work because we openly talk about them. This is one of the big
security challenges."
This story, "Ransomware took in $1 billion in 2016--improved defenses
may not be enough to stem the tide" was originally published by CSO.
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