Average Ransomware Demands Surge by 518% in 2021

Average ransomware demands surged by 518% in the first half of 2021 compared to 2020, while payments climbed by 82% in the same period, according to new figures released by the Unit 42 security consulting group.

The researchers revealed that the average demand from ransomware gangs in H1 2021 was $50m, representing a massive increase from $847,000 in 2020. They noted that the highest demand made of a single victim so far in 2021 was $50m, which compares to $30m last year.

In addition, the average ransomware payment this year was a record $570,000, which compares to $312,000 last year. The team also noted that the average payment in 2020 was 171% higher than in 2019, further highlighting how lucrative this tactic has become during the past 18 months.

According to the researchers, the main factor in these increases was the use of new extortion approaches, meaning ransomware gangs are getting “greedier.” This included the rise of “quadruple extortion,” in which four extortion methods are used against a single victim:

Encryption: making organizations pay to regain access to locked data and systems
Data theft: threatening to release sensitive data if a ransom is not paid
Denial of service (DoS): shutting down a victim’s public website
Harassment: contacting customers, business partners, employees and media to tell them the organization has been compromised

The Unit 42 team also stated that they expect the ransomware crisis to worsen over the coming months and have observed threat actors “develop new approaches for making attacks more disruptive.” This includes encrypting hypervisors, which can corrupt multiple virtual instances running on a single server.

They also predict that managed service providers will be increasingly targe ..

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