Ransomware gangs are major players in the cybersecurity space, especially in recent years. ZDNet reported that ransomware gangs increased their payments by over 311% from 2019 to 2020, with totals for all groups exceeding $350 million in 2020. Ransoms continued rising in 2021. Unit 42, a threat research team at Palo Alto Networks, found that the average payment in 2021 was up 78% to approximately $541,000, with demands from specific attacks increasing 144% to $2.2 million.
A few months ago, vx-underground posted an image they’d received from the LockBit ransomware group. The gang bragged that they had ransomed 12,125 companies, with varying degrees of success. If each of those companies paid an average ransom of $100K (a very low estimate, in terms of ransoms), that totals $1,212,500,000. LockBit has more than 850 published companies on their blog, more than any other ransomware group.
The FBI called the Conti gang’s ransomware variant “the costliest strain of ransomware ever documented.” Interestingly, Conti’s official date of death is May 19, 2022. However, the group may have set up its own demise because of mistakes that made it too risky to continue. And, on the same topic, REvil is back again as of May. This is either the third or fourth time they have ..
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