The phenomenon ransomware turns out to be one of the pillars of cybercrime.
The practice of blocking systems through viruses or malicious agents and then finding oneself in a position of strength compared to the victim. If these threats were limited, both due to the limited diffusion of the Internet and due to a technology that was still in its infancy, over the years ransomware has established itself as a real digital plague.
Although the first cases of similar attacks date back to the end of the 1980s, we can talk about real ransomware starting from 2005with the trojan Archiveus. This malicious agent, in fact, was the first to use RSA it’s at encrypt asymmetrically the files of the Documents folder.
In the 2009instead, a virus called Injury, which worked like modern ransomware. In effect, it encrypted data on computers and sold victims software to decrypt the information.
From the first and rudimentary ransomware up to the RaaS model
Between 2013 and the 2016this type of threat has begun to spread even more massively, taking advantage of the botnet. The spread of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) has turned these attacks into something very common, both for ordinary users and for companies.
Between 2019 and 2020, there was a growth in cybercriminal groups operating in the sector. The introduction of advanced side tactics social engineering and the increased pressures placed on victims, as well as the introduction of double extortionhave made ransomware campaigns even more worrying.
This trend of a gradual refinement of attacks is continuing to this day, with diversified strategies and diffusion techniques increasingly difficult to effectively contain.
The ransomware of the future
Ransomware attacks will continue to evolve and become more sophisticated, advanced and targeted.
In this sense, just think of the fearful ransomware Clopwhich infiltrated MOVEita file transfer application, causing a real disaster on a global scale.
According to experts, in the future they will be increasingly widespread ransomware cloud-awarewith cybercriminals following the trend of companies increasingly favoring systems cloud storage. Intermittent encryption will likely remain a basic technique, adopted by more and more attackers.
It goes without saying that Artificial Intelligence, with i AI models that take inspiration from ChatGPT, will be an increasingly important component, both in terms of dissemination campaigns and in terms of defence. In fact, however, caution e prevention potential victims will have two effective weapons left to avoid this type of attack.
