Criminals behind ransomware attacks are thinking about ways to improve their business model and analysts say that will soon include establishing a system to enable more tailor-made products of disruption.
“Cybercriminals have discussed, in open forums, proposals to create a venture capital organization or stock market of sorts, where interested parties can finance the development of malware, tools, and frameworks without ever writing a line of code,” reads a report Booz Allen Hamilton released Wednesday providing an outlook on next year’s cyberthreats.
Ransomware is a breed of cyberattack that disseminates malware to encrypt or capture organizations’ data and hold it hostage for a payment. Perpetrators have been menacing hospitals as well as state and local government institutions, and their election infrastructure. The report anticipates they will formalize the commoditization of attack elements that has already taken place and allow for it to further branch out and diversify.
“Future developments are likely to include custom [ransomware-as-a-service] operations, in which would-be cybercriminals without the technical expertise can commission malware, tools, or even entire frameworks,” the analysts wrote.
Criminals with efficiency in mind will look for ways to target multiple entities at once by working through a shared supply chain, according to the report.
“Further refinement of tactics used by ransomware operators is likely to include threats against third-party data,” it reads. “The truly ambitious cybercriminal may spend the additional time to compromise an entire network of companies, strike all of them at once, and demand a single large ransom payment from the originating company to provide the decryption keys.”
The health care industry has long been ..
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