The impact of attacks involving various forms of ransomware is the sort of practice that has been widely reported on, but it is important to note that the actual real world effect that it has does not get discussed quite as frequently. A study conducted by eSentire has revealed that nearly 300 organizations have been victims of ransomware attacks just this year, so far, and this has meant that various ransomware groups have ended up earning a total of $45 million from the attacks that they decided to take part in.
A number of gangs were research over the course of this study. New gangs such as Darkside and Avaddon were researched quite a bit, but a fair amount of emphasis was also placed on older and better established gangs such as the likes of CLOP, Ryuk/Conti, DoppelPaymer and Sodin/REvil, and the thing to note here is that each gang seems to specialize in certain regions as well as specific industries. For example, Sodin/REvil seems to focus more on healthcare companies and the like, and they along with Ryuk/Conti appear to prefer targeting laptop manufacturers as well with the latter of these two specializing mostly in manufacturing and logistics companies as well.
One thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that a lot of these attacks just don’t get reported due to the reason that the company that suffered the attack prefers not to talk about it as they generally just pay the ransom that was asked. This specialization indicates a level of organization within these gangs that people had not really known about previously, and it could change how law enforcement agencies decide to deal with these gangs in the future especially over the course of the investigations currently taking place.
Photo: c-guoy / freepik
A number of gangs were research over the course of this study. New gangs such as Darkside and Avaddon were researched quite a bit, but a fair amount of emphasis was also placed on older and better established gangs such as the likes of CLOP, Ryuk/Conti, DoppelPaymer and Sodin/REvil, and the thing to note here is that each gang seems to specialize in certain regions as well as specific industries. For example, Sodin/REvil seems to focus more on healthcare companies and the like, and they along with Ryuk/Conti appear to prefer targeting laptop manufacturers as well with the latter of these two specializing mostly in manufacturing and logistics companies as well.
One thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that a lot of these attacks just don’t get reported due to the reason that the company that suffered the attack prefers not to talk about it as they generally just pay the ransom that was asked. This specialization indicates a level of organization within these gangs that people had not really known about previously, and it could change how law enforcement agencies decide to deal with these gangs in the future especially over the course of the investigations currently taking place.
