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Cyber Risks · Cisco Talos

Ransomware: Past, Present, and Future

Summary: Cisco Talos traces ransomware from the 1989 AIDS Trojan through 1996 Cryptovirology research, 2005 in-the-wild families like GPCoder with 1024-bit RSA, and 2012's mass-deployed Reveton, which one report cited as pulling in roughly $44,000 per day from a single country. Talos estimates Angler exploit kit operators made about $60 million a year delivering ransomware payloads, and cites a Forbes figure that Locky compromised 90,000 victims per day, with a February 2016 hospital attack initially rumored at $3 million but later reported at $17,000.

Bottom line: Every business that pays to recover its files is directly funding development of the next generation of ransomware, and the shift toward enterprise targets like SamSam - which used the open-source Jexboss tool against unpatched JBoss servers to encrypt all accessible data for a larger lump-sum payout - means the spray-and-pray era is giving way to attackers who pick their marks.

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Topics
Malware
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