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The Ransomware Task Force: A New Approach to Fighting Ransomware

Post Syndicated from Jen Ellis original https://blog.rapid7.com/2021/08/03/the-ransomware-task-force-a-new-approach-to-fighting-ransomware/

The Ransomware Task Force: A New Approach to Fighting Ransomware

In the past few months, we’ve seen ransomware attacks shut down healthcare across Ireland, fuel delivery across parts of the US, and meat processing across Australia, Canada and the US. We’ve seen demands of payments in the tens of millions of dollars. We’re also continuing to see trends around ransomware-as-a-service and double or triple extortion continuing to rise. It’s clear that ransomware attacks are increasing in frequency, breadth, sophistication, scale, and impact.

Recognizing this, the Institute for Security and Technology put together a comprehensive Ransomware Task Force (RTF) to identify new approaches to shift the dynamics of ransomware and reduce opportunities for attackers. The Ransomware Task Force involved more than 60 participants representing a wide range of expertise and experience, including from multiple governments, law enforcement, civil society and public policy nonprofits, and security advancement groups. From the private sector, organizations of all sizes participated, including many that have experienced ransomware attacks firsthand or that are involved in dealing with the fallout, such as cybersecurity companies, law firms, and cyber insurers. Rapid7 was among those that participated — I was one of the co-chairs, and my amazing colleagues, Bob Rudis, Tod Beardsley, and Scott King participated as well.

From the outset, the intent of the Task Force was to look at the issue holistically and come up with a comprehensive set of recommendations to deter and disrupt ransomware attackers, thereby helping organizations prepare for and respond to attacks at scale. Recognizing the scale and severity of the issue — and the need for systemic and societal responses — our target audience was policymakers and government leaders.

The Task Force recognized that ransomware is not a new topic, and we had no desire to rehash previous efforts. Instead, we sought to learn from them and, where appropriate, amplify and extend them, supporting the next period of growth on this thorny issue. Ransomware’s reach and impact are increasing, which has a serious impact on society. The effects are only likely to worsen without significant action from governments and other leaders.

Key recommendations

The final report issued by the Task Force makes 48 recommendations, broken into actions to deter, disrupt, prepare for, and respond to ransomware attacks. The recommendations are designed to work in concert with each other, though we recognize there are a large number of them, and many will take time to implement. In reality, though, there truly is no silver bullet for addressing ransomware, no one thing that will magically solve this problem. If we want to shift the dynamics in a meaningful way that makes it harder for attackers to succeed, we need to make adjustments in a range of areas. It’s also worth noting that the Task Force’s goal was to provide recommendations to government and other leaders, not to provide tactical, technical guidance.

Given there are 48 recommendations, and they are well set out in the report, I won’t go over them now. I’ll just highlight a few of the big themes and, where relevant, what’s happened since the launch of the report.

Make it a top priority

One of the biggest challenges we face with any discussion around cybercrime is that it’s often viewed as a niche technical problem, not as a broad societal issue. This has made it harder to get the required attention and investment in solutions. The Task Force called for senior political leaders to recognize ransomware for what it is: a national security issue and a major threat to our ways of life (Action 1.2.5, page 26). We also called for a whole-of-government approach whereby leaders would engage various stakeholders across the government to help ensure necessary action is taking place collaboratively across the board (Actions 1.2.1 and 1.2.2, page 23).

One possible silver lining of the recent attacks against critical infrastructure is that they’ve helped establish this level of priority. In the US, we’ve seen various parts of the government start to take action: Congress has held hearings and proposed legislation; the Department of Justice has given ransomware investigations similar status to those for terrorism; the Department of Homeland Security has issued new cybersecurity guidelines for pipelines; the White House issued a memo to urge the private sector to take steps to protect against ransomware; and even President Biden has talked about ransomware in press conferences and with other world leaders.

Global action for a global problem

To take meaningful action to reduce ransomware attacks, we must acknowledge the geopolitical aspects. Firstly, the issue affects countries all around the world. Governments taking action should do so in coordination and cooperation in order to amplify the impact and hit attackers on multiple fronts at once (Actions 1.1.1 – 1.1.4, 1.2.6, pages 21-22, 26).

Secondly, and perhaps more crucially, one of the main advantages for attackers is the existence of nations that provide safe havens, because they’re either unwilling or unable to prosecute cybercriminals. This also makes it much harder for other countries to prosecute these criminals, and as such, ransomware attackers rarely seem to fear consequences for their actions.

The Task Force recommended that governments work together to tackle the issue of safe havens and adopt key practices to protect their citizens — or help them better protect themselves (Actions 1.3.1 and 1.3.2, page 27).

We’ve already seen some progress in this regard, as ransomware was raised at the recent G7 Summit, and the resulting communique included the following commitment from members:

“We also commit to work together to urgently address the escalating shared threat from criminal ransomware networks. We call on all states to urgently identify and disrupt ransomware criminal networks operating from within their borders, and hold those networks accountable for their actions.”

It will be interesting to see whether and how the G7 members will follow through on this commitment. I hope they’ll take action, build momentum, and recruit participation from other nations.

Reducing paths to revenue

As mentioned above, we’re seeing attackers demand higher and higher ransoms, which likely attracts other criminals to enter the market. Hopefully, the opposite is also true; if we reduce the opportunity to make money from ransomware, the number of attacks will decrease.

This rationale, coupled with discomfort over the idea of ransom payments being used to fund other types of organized crime — including human trafficking, child exploitation, and weapons trafficking — resulted in a great deal of discussion around the notion of banning ransom payments.

While the Task Force agreed that payments should be discouraged, the idea of a legal prohibition was challenging. Given the lack of real risk or friction for attackers, it’s likely that if payments were outlawed, attackers wouldn’t simply give up. Rather, they’d first play a game of chicken against victims, focusing on the organizations least likely to resist paying — namely providers of critical functions that can’t be disrupted without profound impact on society, or small-to-medium businesses that aren’t financially able to prepare for and weather an attack.

Given the concerns over these practicalities, the Task Force did not recommend banning payments. Rather, we looked at alternative ways of reducing the ease with which attackers realize a profit. There are two main paths to this: reducing the likelihood of victims making a payment, and making it technically harder for attackers to get their payment.

In terms of making victims think twice before making a payment, the RTF recommended a few measures:

  • Requiring the disclosure of payments (Action 4.2.4, page 46): This will help to build greater understanding of what is happening in the attack landscape and may enable law enforcement to build more information on attackers, or even recapture payments.
  • Requiring organizations to conduct cost-benefit analysis prior to making payments (Action 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, pages 47 and 48): This will encourage organizations to look into alternative options for resolution — for example, turning to the No More Ransom Project to seek decryption keys.
  • Creating a fund to assist certain organizations in recovery (Action 4.1.2, page 43): Often, organizations say the cost of recovery significantly outsizes that of the ransom, leaving them no choice but to give into their attacker’s demands. For qualifying organizations, this fund would rebalance the scales and give them a pragmatic alternative to paying the ransom.

On the other track — disrupting the system that facilitates the payment of ransoms — the RTF recommended that cryptocurrency exchanges, kiosks, and over-the-counter trading desks be required to comply with existing laws, such as Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), and Combatting Financing of Terrorism (CFT) (Action 2.1.2, pages 29 and 30).

Better preparation, better response

During the explorations of the Task Force, it became apparent that part of the reason ransomware attacks are so successful is that many organizations don’t truly understand the threat, believe it’s relevant to them, or understand how to protect themselves. We repeatedly heard that, while there is a lot of information on ransomware, it’s overwhelming and often unhelpful. Many organizations don’t know what to focus on, and guidance may be oversimplified, overcomplicated, or insufficient.

With this in mind, one of our top recommendations was for the development of a ransomware framework that would cover measures for both preparing for and responding to attacks (Action 3.1.1, pages 35 and 36). The framework would need to be pragmatic, actionable, and address varying levels of sophistication and capability (Action 3.1.2, page 36). And because one of our main themes was around international cooperation, we also recommended there be a single source of truth adopted and promoted by multiple governments around the world. In fact, we recommended the framework be developed through both international and public-private collaboration. It should also be kept up to date to react to evolving ransomware attack trends.

Creating the framework is a lift, but it’s only part of the battle — you can’t drive adoption if you don’t also tackle the lack of awareness and understanding. As such, we also recommend that governments run high-profile awareness campaigns, partnering with organizations with reach into audiences that aren’t being well addressed today (Actions 3.2.1 and 3.2.2, pages 37 and 38). For example, many governments have toolkits or content aimed at small-to-medium businesses, but most leaders of these organizations seem largely unaware of the risk — until someone they know personally is hit by an attack.

The path forward

Unfortunately, ransomware continues to dominate headlines and harm organizations around the world. As a result, many governments are paying a great deal of attention to this issue and looking for solutions. I’m relieved to say the Ransomware Task Force’s report and recommendations have seen a fair bit of interest and support. For us, the next challenge is to keep the momentum going and help governments translate interest into action.

In the meantime, my colleagues at Rapid7 and I will continue to try to help our customers and community prepare for and respond to attacks. We’re working on some other content to help people better understand the dynamics of the issue, as well as the steps they can take to protect themselves or get involved in broader response efforts.

Look out for our series of blogs on different aspects of ransomware, and in the meantime, check out our interviews with ransomware experts on our Security Nation podcast. You can also check out my talk and Q&A on the Ransomware Task Force at Black Hat, or as part of Rapid7’s Virtual Vegas, which includes a Ransomware (un)Happy Hour — bring your ransomware war stories, lessons learned, or questions.

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Decrypter FOMO No Mo’: Five Years of the No More Ransom Project

Post Syndicated from Jen Ellis original https://blog.rapid7.com/2021/07/26/decrypter-fomo-no-mo-five-years-of-the-no-more-ransom-project/

Decrypter FOMO No Mo’: Five Years of the No More Ransom Project

The amazing No More Ransom Project celebrates its fifth anniversary today and so we just wanted to take a moment to talk about what it has accomplished and why you should tell all your friends about it.

The name pretty much says it all — No More Ransom aims to help organizations avoid having to pay ransoms for cyber attacks by providing guidance for defending against attacks, connecting victims with law enforcement, and most crucially, by providing free decryption tools. Just think about that for a second … you get hit by ransomware and you get a demand for a ransom payment of tens of thousands of dollars, or more. Recently we’ve seen ransom demands go up as high as tens of millions of dollars. But there’s a chance that rather than having to shell out piles of your hard earned cash (in crypto form), you could, in fact, get what you need for free with minimal fuss or effort.

Sounds too good to be true, right? Like maybe you’re thinking that they only have decryptor tools for old encryptors that aren’t really being used anymore? Well, despite being just five years old today, No More Ransom’s tools have already been downloaded more than six million times, and have saved organizations an estimated $900 million in ransoms that didn’t have to be paid. In fact, the Project offers a staggering 121 free tools, which decrypt 151 ransomware families. So we’re talking about a project that is having a profound impact every day. See? You should totally check it out and tell all your friends about it!

The Project is a great example of what can be achieved with effective public-private partnership. The main backers are Europol, the Dutch Government, McAfee and Kaspersky. They have now recruited about 170 other partners from law enforcement, the private sector, and nonprofits around the world, which I’m guessing goes a long way towards helping them stay up to date with malware samples and decryption tools. Special shout outs should also go to Amazon Web Services and Barracuda for hosting the site.

Here’s the thing though, recently I co-chaired the Ransomware Task Force (RTF), which was brought together by the Institute for Security and Technology, to come up with recommendations for reducing ransomware on an international, societal level. As part of the RTF’s investigations into what is happening in the ransomware landscape, we spoke to numerous organizations that have suffered ransomware attacks, as well as, many of the entities they rely on to help them respond — law enforcement, cyber insurers, incident responders, legal counsel. We were surprised to discover that very few of the organizations we spoke with knew about the No More Ransom Project or thought to look there for free decryption tools before paying the ransom. This seemed to be particularly true in the US. Now granted, the tools have been downloaded 6 million times, so definitely some folks do know to look there, often encouraged by law enforcement teams, but there are clearly also many people and organizations who don’t know about it and should.

I suspect that the astonishing ‘six million’ figure is less about awareness and more about how incredibly prevalent ransom attacks have been over the past few years, which is why this project is so important and valuable. So help the No More Ransom Project celebrate its birthday by telling everyone you know about it. You can casually drop that $900 million saving stat into conversation — it’s so impressive I had to mention it twice.

If you’re interested in hearing more of me being incredibly enthusiastic about the Project, check out this week’s special edition of our Security Nation podcast, which will be published on Wednesday, July 28th and features an interview with Philipp Amann, Head of Strategy at the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), which is part of Europol.

As a tease for the interview, we’ll give Philipp the final word on the No More Ransom Project:

“No More Ransom offers real hope to the victims, and also delivers a clear message to the criminals: the international community stands together with a common goal – to disrupt this criminal business model and to bring offenders to justice.”

Disrupting Ransomware by Disrupting Bitcoin

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/07/disrupting-ransomware-by-disrupting-bitcoin.html

Ransomware isn’t new; the idea dates back to 1986 with the “Brain” computer virus. Now, it’s become the criminal business model of the internet for two reasons. The first is the realization that no one values data more than its original owner, and it makes more sense to ransom it back to them — sometimes with the added extortion of threatening to make it public — than it does to sell it to anyone else. The second is a safe way of collecting ransoms: bitcoin.

This is where the suggestion to ban cryptocurrencies as a way to “solve” ransomware comes from. Lee Reiners, executive director of the Global Financial Markets Center at Duke Law, proposed this in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. Journalist Jacob Silverman made the same proposal in a New Republic essay. Without this payment channel, they write, the major ransomware epidemic is likely to vanish, since the only payment alternatives are suitcases full of cash or the banking system, both of which have severe limitations for criminal enterprises.

It’s the same problem kidnappers have had for centuries. The riskiest part of the operation is collecting the ransom. That’s when the criminal exposes themselves, by telling the payer where to leave the money. Or gives out their banking details. This is how law enforcement tracks kidnappers down and arrests them. The rise of an anonymous, global, distributed money-transfer system outside of any national control is what makes computer ransomware possible.

This problem is made worse by the nature of the criminals. They operate out of countries that don’t have the resources to prosecute cybercriminals, like Nigeria; or protect cybercriminals that only attack outside their borders, like Russia; or use the proceeds as a revenue stream, like North Korea. So even when a particular group is identified, it is often impossible to prosecute. Which leaves the only tools left a combination of successfully blocking attacks (another hard problem) and eliminating the payment channels that the criminals need to turn their attacks into profit.

In this light, banning cryptocurrencies like bitcoin is an obvious solution. But while the solution is conceptually simple, it’s also impossible because — despite its overwhelming problems — there are so many legitimate interests using cryptocurrencies, albeit largely for speculation and not for legal payments.

We suggest an easier alternative: merely disrupt the cryptocurrency markets. Making them harder to use will have the effect of making them less useful as a ransomware payment vehicle, and not just because victims will have more difficulty figuring out how to pay. The reason requires understanding how criminals collect their profits.

Paying a ransom starts with a victim turning a large sum of money into bitcoin and then transferring it to a criminal controlled “account.” Bitcoin is, in itself, useless to the criminal. You can’t actually buy much with bitcoin. It’s more like casino chips, only usable in a single establishment for a single purpose. (Yes, there are companies that “accept” bitcoin, but that is mostly a PR stunt.) A criminal needs to convert the bitcoin into some national currency that he can actually save, spend, invest, or whatever.

This is where it gets interesting. Conceptually, bitcoin combines numbered Swiss bank accounts with public transactions and balances. Anyone can create as many anonymous accounts as they want, but every transaction is posted publicly for the entire world to see. This creates some important challenges for these criminals.

First, the criminal needs to take efforts to conceal the bitcoin. In the old days, criminals used “https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/individual-arrested-and-charged-operating-notorious-darknet-cryptocurrency-mixer”>mixing services“: third parties that would accept bitcoin into one account and then return it (minus a fee) from an unconnected set of accounts. Modern bitcoin tracing tools make this money laundering trick ineffective. Instead, the modern criminal does something called “chain swaps.”

In a chain swap, the criminal transfers the bitcoin to a shady offshore cryptocurrency exchange. These exchanges are notoriously weak about enforcing money laundering laws and — for the most part — don’t have access to the banking system. Once on this alternate exchange, the criminal sells his bitcoin and buys some other cryptocurrency like Ethereum, Dogecoin, Tether, Monero, or one of dozens of others. They then transfer it to another shady offshore exchange and transfer it back into bitcoin. Voila­ — they now have “clean” bitcoin.

Second, the criminal needs to convert that bitcoin into spendable money. They take their newly cleaned bitcoin and transfer it to yet another exchange, one connected to the banking system. Or perhaps they hire someone else to do this step. These exchanges conduct greater oversight of their customers, but the criminal can use a network of bogus accounts, recruit a bunch of users to act as mules, or simply bribe an employee at the exchange to evade whatever laws there. The end result of this activity is to turn the bitcoin into dollars, euros, or some other easily usable currency.

Both of these steps — the chain swapping and currency conversion — require a large amount of normal activity to keep from standing out. That is, they will be easy for law enforcement to identify unless they are hiding among lots of regular, noncriminal transactions. If speculators stopped buying and selling cryptocurrencies and the market shrunk drastically, these criminal activities would no longer be easy to conceal: there’s simply too much money involved.

This is why disruption will work. It doesn’t require an outright ban to stop these criminals from using bitcoin — just enough sand in the gears in the cryptocurrency space to reduce its size and scope.

How do we do this?

The first mechanism observes that the criminal’s flows have a unique pattern. The overall cryptocurrency space is “zero sum”: Every dollar made was provided by someone else. And the primary legal use of cryptocurrencies involves speculation: people effectively betting on a currency’s future value. So the background speculators are mostly balanced: One bitcoin in results in one bitcoin out. There are exceptions involving offshore exchanges and speculation among different cryptocurrencies, but they’re marginal, and only involve turning one bitcoin into a little more (if a speculator is lucky) or a little less (if unlucky).

Criminals and their victims act differently. Victims are net buyers, turning millions of dollars into bitcoin and never going the other way. Criminals are net sellers, only turning bitcoin into currency. The only other net sellers are the cryptocurrency miners, and they are easy to identify.

Any banked exchange that cares about enforcing money laundering laws must consider all significant net sellers of cryptocurrencies as potential criminals and report them to both in-country and US financial authorities. Any exchange that doesn’t should have its banking forcefully cut.

The US Treasury can ensure these exchanges are cut out of the banking system. By designating a rogue but banked exchange, the Treasury says that it is illegal not only to do business with the exchange but for US banks to do business with the exchange’s bank. As a consequence, the rogue exchange would quickly find its banking options eliminated.

A second mechanism involves the IRS. In 2019, it started demanding information from cryptocurrency exchanges and added a check box to the 1040 form that requires disclosure from those who both buy and sell cryptocurrencies. And while this is intended to target tax evasion, it has the side consequence of disrupting those offshore exchanges criminals rely to launder their bitcoin. Speculation on cryptocurrency is far less attractive since the speculators have to pay taxes but most exchanges don’t help out by filing 1099-Bs that make it easy to calculate the taxes owed.

A third mechanism involves targeting the cryptocurrency Tether. While most cryptocurrencies have values that fluctuate with demand, Tether is a “stablecoin” that is supposedly backed one-to-one with dollars. Of course, it probably isn’t, as its claim to be the seventh largest holder of commercial paper (short-term loans to major businesses) is blatantly untrue. Instead, they appear part of a cycle where new Tether is issued, used to buy cryptocurrencies, and the resulting cryptocurrencies now “back” Tether and drive up the price.

This behavior is clearly that of a “wildcat bank,” an 1800s fraudulent banking style that has long been illegal. Tether also bears a striking similarity to Liberty Reserve, an online currency that the Department of Justice successfully prosecuted for money laundering in 2013. Shutting down Tether would have the side effect of eliminating the value proposition for the exchanges that support chain swapping, since these exchanges need a “stable” value for the speculators to trade against.

There are further possibilities. One involves treating the cryptocurrency miners, those who validate all transactions and add them to the public record, as money transmitters — and subject to the regulations around that business. Another option involves requiring cryptocurrency exchanges to actually deliver the cryptocurrencies into customer-controlled wallets.

Effectively, all cryptocurrency exchanges avoid transferring cryptocurrencies between customers. Instead, they simply record entries in a central database. This makes sense because actual “on chain” transactions can be particularly expensive for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or Ethereum. If all speculators needed to actually receive their bitcoins, it would make clear that its value proposition as a currency simply doesn’t exist, as the already strained system would grind to a halt.

And, of course, law enforcement can already target criminals’ bitcoin directly. An example of this just occurred, when US law enforcement was able to seize 85% of the $4 million ransom Colonial Pipeline paid to the criminal organization DarkSide. That by the time the seizure occurred the bitcoin lost more than 30% of its value is just one more reminder of how unworkable bitcoin is as a “store of value.”

There is no single silver bullet to disrupt either cryptocurrencies or ransomware. But enough little disruptions, a “death of a thousand cuts” through new and existing regulation, should make bitcoin no longer usable for ransomware. And if there’s no safe way for a criminal to collect the ransom, their business model becomes no longer viable.

This essay was written with Nicholas Weaver, and previously appeared on Slate.com.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

Post Syndicated from Vivek Ganti original https://blog.cloudflare.com/ddos-attack-trends-for-2021-q2/

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

Recent weeks have witnessed massive ransomware and ransom DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack campaigns that interrupted aspects of critical infrastructure around the world, including one of the largest petroleum pipeline system operators, and one of the world’s biggest meat processing companies. Earlier this quarter, more than 200 organizations across Belgium, including the government and parliament websites and other services, were also DDoS’d.

And when most of the United States were celebrating Independence Day on July 4, hundreds of US companies were hit by a ransomware attack demanding 70 million USD in Bitcoin. Attackers known to be affiliated with REvil, a Russian ransomware group, exploited multiple previously unknown vulnerabilities in IT management software. The targets included schools, small public-sector bodies, travel and leisure organizations, and credit unions, to name a few. While the threat of ransomware and ransom DDoS is not new (read our posts on ransomware and ransom DDoS from 2021 Q1), the latest attacks on Internet properties ranging from wineries, professional sports teams, ferry services and hospitals has brought them from just being background noise to front page headlines affecting our day-to-day lives. In fact, recent attacks have propelled ransomware and DDoS to the top of US President Biden’s national security agenda.

The DDoS attack trends observed over Cloudflare’s network in 2021 Q2 paint a picture that reflects the overall global cyber threat landscape. Here are some highlights.

  • Over 11% of our surveyed customers who were targeted by a DDoS attack reported receiving a threat or ransom letter threatening in advance, in the first six months of this year. Emergency onboarding of customers under an active DDoS attack increased by 41.8% in 2021 H1 compared to 2020 H2.
  • HTTP DDoS attacks targeting government administration/public sector websites increased by 491%, making it the second most targeted industry after Consumer Services whose DDoS activity increased by 684% QoQ.
  • China remains the country with the most DDoS activity originating from within their borders — 7 out of every 1,000 HTTP requests originating from China were part of an HTTP DDoS attack targeting websites, and more than 3 out of every 100 bytes that were ingested in our data centers in China were part of a network-layer DDoS attack.
  • Emerging threats included amplification DDoS attacks that abused the Quote of the Day (QOTD) protocol which increased by 123% QoQ. Additionally, as the adoption of QUIC protocol continues to increase, so do attacks over QUIC — registering a whopping 109% QoQ surge in 2021 Q2.
    The number of network-layer DDoS attacks in the range of 10-100 Gbps increased by 21.4% QoQ. One customer that was attacked is Hypixel, an American gaming company. Hypixel remained online with no downtime and no performance penalties to their gamer users, even when under an active DDoS attack campaign larger than 620 Gbps. Read their story here.

To view all DDoS attack insights across all regions and industries worldwide, visit Cloudflare’s interactive Radar DDoS dashboard.

Application-layer DDoS attacks

Application-layer DDoS attacks, specifically HTTP DDoS attacks, are attacks that usually aim to disrupt an HTTP server by making it unable to process legitimate user requests. If a server is bombarded with more requests than it can process, the server will drop legitimate requests or even crash resulting in performance penalties or a denial of service event for legitimate users.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

DDoS activity per market industry

When we analyze attacks, we calculate the ‘DDoS activity’ rate, which is the percentage of attack traffic out of the total traffic (attack + clean). This allows us to normalize the data points and avoid biases towards, for example, a larger data center that naturally handles more traffic and therefore also more attacks.

In 2021 Q2, Consumer Services was the most targeted industry followed by Government Administration and Marketing & Advertising.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

DDoS activity per source country

To understand the origin of the HTTP attacks we observed over Cloudflare’s network, we look at the source IP address of the client generating the attack HTTP requests. Unlike network-layer attacks, source IPs cannot be spoofed in HTTP attacks. A high DDoS activity rate in a given country indicates large botnets operating from within.

China and the US remain in the first and second places, respectively, regarding the percentage of DDoS activity originating from within their territories. In China, more than 7 out of every 1,000 HTTP requests were part of an HTTP DDoS attack, while in the US almost 5 out of 1,000 HTTP requests were part of an attack.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

DDoS activity per target country

In order to identify which countries the targets of the DDoS attacks resided in, we break down the DDoS activity by our customers’ billing countries. Note that Cloudflare does not charge for attack traffic and has pioneered providing unmetered and unlimited DDoS protection since 2017. By cross-referencing the attack data with our customers’ billing country, we can identify which countries were attacked the most.

Data observed in 2021 Q2 suggest that organizations in the US and China were the most targeted by HTTP DDoS attacks. In fact, one out of every 200 HTTP requests destined to US-based organizations was part of a DDoS attack.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

Network-layer DDoS attacks

While application-layer attacks strike the application (Layer 7 of the OSI model) running the service end users are trying to access, network-layer attacks target network infrastructure (such as in-line routers and other network servers) and the Internet link itself.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2
The chart above shows the distribution of network-layer DDoS attacks in 2021 Q2.

Distribution of attacks by size (packet rate and bit rate)

There are different ways of measuring the size of a L3/4 DDoS attack. One is the volume of traffic it delivers, measured as the bit rate (specifically, gigabits-per-second). Another is the number of packets it delivers, measured as the packet rate (specifically, packets-per-second). Attacks with high bit rates attempt to saturate the Internet link, while attacks with high packet rates attempt to overwhelm the servers, routers or other in-line hardware appliances.

The distribution of attacks by their size (in bit rate) and month is shown below. As observed in the chart, all attacks over 300 Gbps were observed in the month of June.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

In terms of bit rate, attacks under 500 Mbps constituted a majority of all DDoS attacks observed in 2021 Q2.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

Similarly, looking from the lens of packet rate, nearly 94% of attacks were under 50K pps. Even though attacks from 1-10M pps constituted only 1% of all DDoS attacks observed, this number is 27.5% higher than that observed in the previous quarter, suggesting that larger attacks are not diminishing either — but rather increasing.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2
DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

Note that while attacks under 500 Mbps and 50K pps might seem ‘small’ compared to other headline-making large attacks, they are often sufficient to create major disruptions for Internet properties that are not protected by an always-on, automated cloud-based DDoS protection service. Moreso, many organisations have uplinks provided by their service providers with a bandwidth capacity smaller than 1 Gbps. Assuming their public-facing network interface also serves legitimate traffic, DDoS attacks smaller than 500 Mbps are often capable of taking down exposed Internet properties.

Distribution by attack duration

Cloudflare continues to see a large percentage of DDoS attacks that last under an hour. In Q2, over 97% of all DDoS attacks lasted less than an hour.

Short burst attacks may attempt to cause damage without being detected by DDoS detection systems. DDoS services that rely on manual analysis and mitigation may prove to be useless against these types of attacks because they are over before the analyst even identifies the attack traffic.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

Alternatively, the use of short attacks may be used to probe the cyber defenses of the target. Load-testing tools and automated DDoS tools, that are widely available on the dark web, can generate short bursts of a SYN flood, for example, and then follow up with another short attack using a different attack vector. This allows attackers to understand the security posture of their targets before they decide to launch larger attacks at larger rates and longer durations — which come at a cost.

In other cases, attackers generate small DDoS attacks as proof and warning to the target organization of the attacker’s ability to cause real damage later on. It’s often followed by a ransom email to the target organization, demanding payment to avoid suffering an attack that could more thoroughly cripple network infrastructure.

This highlights the need for an always on, automated DDoS protection approach. DDoS protection services that rely on manual re-routing, analysis and mitigation may prove to be useless against these types of attacks because they are over before the analyst can even identify the attack traffic.

Distribution of attacks by attack vectors

An attack vector is the term used to describe the method that the attacker utilizes in their attempt to cause a denial of service event.

As observed in previous quarters, attacks utilizing SYN floods and UDP-based protocols remain the most popular methods by attackers.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

What is a SYN flood attack? It’s a DDoS attack that exploits the very foundation of the TCP protocol. A stateful TCP connection between a client and a server begins with a 3-way TCP handshake. The client sends an initial connection request packet with a synchronize flag (SYN). The server responds with a packet that contains a synchronized acknowledgment flag (SYN-ACK). Finally, the client responds with an acknowledgment (ACK) packet. At this point, a connection is established and data can be exchanged until the connection is closed. This stateful process can be abused by attackers to cause denial of service events.

By repeatedly sending SYN packets, the attacker attempts to overwhelm a server or the router’s connection table that tracks the state of TCP connections. The router replies with a SYN-ACK packet, allocates a certain amount of memory for each given connection, and falsely waits for the client to respond with the final ACK. Given a sufficient number of connections occupying the router’s memory, the router is unable to allocate further memory for legitimate clients, causing the router to crash or preventing it from handling legitimate client connections, i.e., a denial of service event.

Emerging threats

Emerging threats included amplification DDoS attacks that abuse the Quote of the Day (QOTD) service which increased by 123% QoQ. QOTD was defined in RFC-865 (1983) and can be sent over either the UDP or TCP protocols. It was originally designed for debugging and as a measurement tool, with no specific syntax for the quote. The RFC does however recommend the use of ASCII characters and to limit the length to 512 characters.

Furthermore, we’ve seen a 107% increase QoQ in UDP Portmap and Echo attacks — all of which are really old attack vectors. This may indicate attackers digging up old methods and attack tools to try and overcome protection systems.
As we’ve seen in previous quarters, the adoption of the QUIC protocol continues to increase. Consequently, so do attacks over QUIC, or more specifically floods and amplification attacks of non-QUIC traffic in places where we’d expect to see QUIC traffic. In 2021 Q2, these types of attacks increased by 109% QoQ. This continued trend may indicate that attackers are attempting to abuse the QUIC-designated ports and gateways into organizations’ networks — searching for vulnerabilities and security holes.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

DDoS activity by Cloudflare data center country

In 2021 Q2, our data center in Haiti observed the largest percentage of network-layer DDoS attack traffic, followed by Brunei (almost 3 out of every 100 packets were part of an attack) and China.

Note that when analyzing network-layer DDoS attacks, we bucket the traffic by the Cloudflare edge data center locations where the traffic was ingested, and not by the source IP. The reason for this is that, when attackers launch network-layer attacks, they can spoof the source IP address in order to obfuscate the attack source and introduce randomness into the attack properties, which may make it harder for simple DDoS protection systems to block the attack. Hence, if we were to derive the source country based on a spoofed source IP, we would get a spoofed country. Cloudflare is able to overcome the challenges of spoofed IPs by displaying the attack data by the location of Cloudflare’s data center in which the attack was observed. We’re able to achieve geographical accuracy in our report because we have data centers in over 200 cities around the world.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2
DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

To view all regions and countries, check out the Radar DDoS Report dashboard’s interactive map.

A note on ransomware and ransom DDoS — a growing global threat

The last few weeks have seen a resurgence of ransom-driven cyber threats: ransomware and ransom DDoS (RDDoS).

So what is ransomware and ransom DDoS, and how are they different?

Ransomware is malicious software that encrypts an organization’s systems and databases, rendering them inaccessible and unusable. Malware is usually introduced into an organization’s systems via phishing emails — tricking employees to click on a link or download a file. Once the malware is installed on the employee’s device, it encrypts the device and can propagate to the entire network of the organization’s servers and employee devices. The attacker will demand money, usually in the form of Bitcoin, in exchange for decrypting the organization’s systems and granting them access back to their systems.

Unlike a ransomware attack, a ransom DDoS attack does not encrypt a company’s systems; it aims to knock them offline if the ransom is not paid. What makes ransom DDoS attacks even more dangerous is that they do not require the attacker to gain access to a business’s internal systems to execute the attack. However, with a strong DDoS protection strategy in place, a ransom DDoS attack has little to no effect on businesses.

Ransomware and ransom DDoS threats are impacting most industries across the globe — the financial industry, transportation, oil and gas, consumer goods, and even education and healthcare.

Entities claiming to be ‘Fancy Lazarus’, ‘Fancy Bear’, ‘Lazarus Group’, and ‘REvil’ are once again launching ransomware and ransom-DDoS attacks against organizations’ websites and network infrastructure unless a ransom is paid before a given deadline. In the case of DDoS threats, prior to the ransom note, a small DDoS attack is usually launched as a form of demonstration. The demonstration attack is typically over UDP, lasting roughly 30-120 minutes.

The ransom note is typically sent to the common group email aliases of the company that are publicly available online such as noc@, support@, help@, legal@, abuse@, etc. In several cases, it has ended up in spam. In other cases, we’ve seen employees disregard the ransom note as spam, increasing the organization’s response time which resulted in further damage to their online properties.

Cloudflare’s recommendation for organizations that receive a threat or ransom note:

  1. Do not panic, and we recommend you do not pay the ransom: Paying ransom only encourages and funds bad actors. There’s also no guarantee that you won’t be attacked again anyway.
  2. Contact local law enforcement: Be ready to provide a copy of the ransom letter you received and any other logs or packet captures.
  3. Activate an effective DDoS protection strategy: Cloud-based DDoS protection can be quickly onboarded in the event of an active threat, and with a team of security experts on your side, risks can be mitigated quickly and effectively.

Here’s a short video by Cloudflare CTO, John Graham-Cumming addressing the threat of ransom DDoS attacks.

Cloudflare protects Hypixel against a massive DDoS attack campaign

At Cloudflare, our teams have been exceptionally busy this past quarter rapidly onboarding (onto our Magic Transit service) a multitude of new and existing customers that have either received a ransom letter or were under an active DDoS attack.

One such customer is Hypixel Inc, the development studio behind the world’s largest Minecraft minigame server. With over 24M total unique logins to date and a world record 216,000+ concurrent players on PC, the Hypixel team works hard to add value to the experience of millions of players across the globe.

The gaming industry is often subject to some of the largest volumetric DDoS attacks — and as a marquee brand, Hypixel attracts more than its fair share. Uptime and high performance are fundamental to the functioning of Hypixel’s servers. Any perceived downtime or noticeable lag could result in an exodus of gamers.

When Hypixel was under a massive DDoS attack campaign, they turned to Cloudflare to extend their services with Cloudflare to include Magic Transit, Cloudflare’s BGP-based DDoS protection service for network infrastructure. After rapidly onboarding them overnight, Cloudflare was automatically able to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks targeting their network — several of which were well over 620 Gbps. The DDoS attack comprised mostly TCP floods and UDP amplification attacks. In the graph, the various colors represent the multiple Cloudflare systems that contribute to detecting and mitigating the multi-vector attack — emphasising the value of our multi-layered DDoS approach.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

Even as attack patterns changed in real-time, Magic Transit shielded Hypixel’s network. In fact, because all their clean traffic routed over Cloudflare’s high performing low-latency network, Hypixel’s users noticed no change in gamer experience — even during an active volumetric DDoS attack.

During the attack campaign, Cloudflare automatically detected and mitigated over 5,000 DDoS attacks: 53% were ACK floods, 39% were UDP-based attacks and 8% SYN floods.

DDoS attack trends for 2021 Q2

“We had several attacks of well over 620 Gbps with no impact at all on our players. Their gaming experience remained uninterrupted and fast, thanks to Cloudflare Magic Transit.”
– Simon Collins-Laflamme, CEO, Hypixel Inc.

Hypixel’s journey with Cloudflare began with them employing Cloudflare Spectrum to help protect their gaming infrastructure against DDoS attacks. As their user base grew, they adopted additional Cloudflare products to bolster the robustness and resilience of all of their critical infrastructure. Today, they use multiple Cloudflare products including CDN, Rate Limiting, Spectrum, Argo Smart Routing, and Load Balancing to build and secure infrastructure that provides gamers around the world the real-time gaming experiences they need.

Get holistic protection against cyber attacks of any kind

DDoS attacks constitute just one facet of the many cyber threats organizations are facing today. As businesses shift to a Zero Trust approach, network and security buyers will face larger threats related to network access, and a continued surge in the frequency and sophistication of bot-related and ransomware attacks.

A key design tenet while building products at Cloudflare is integration. Cloudflare One is a solution that uses a Zero Trust security model to provide companies a better way to protect devices, data, and applications — and is deeply integrated with our existing platform of security and DDoS solutions.

In fact, Cloudflare offers an integrated solution that comprises an all-star cast featuring the following to name a few:

  • DDoS: LEADER in Forrester Wave™ for DDoS Mitigation Solutions, Q1 20211
  • WAF: Cloudflare is a CHALLENGER in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Application Firewall (receiving the highest placement in the ‘Ability to Execute’)2
  • Zero Trust: Cloudflare is a LEADER in the Omdia Market Radar: Zero-Trust Access Report, 20203
  • Web protection: Innovation leader in the Global Holistic Web Protection Market for 2020 by Frost & Sullivan4

Cloudflare’s global (and growing) network is uniquely positioned to deliver DDoS protection and other security, performance, and reliability services with unparalleled scale, speed, and smarts.

To learn more about Cloudflare’s DDoS solution contact us or get started.

____

1Forrester Wave™: DDoS Mitigation Solutions, Q1 2021, Forrester Research, Inc., March 3, 2021. Access the report at https://www.cloudflare.com/forrester-wave-ddos-mitigation-2021/
2Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Web Application Firewalls”, Analyst(s): Jeremy D’Hoinne, Adam Hils, John Watts, Rajpreet Kaur, October 19, 2020. https://www.cloudflare.com/gartner-mq-waf-2020/
3 https://www.cloudflare.com/lp/omdia-zero-trust
4https://www.cloudflare.com/lp/frost-radar-holistic-web/

REvil is Off-Line

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/07/revil-is-off-line.html

This is an interesting development:

Just days after President Biden demanded that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shut down ransomware groups attacking American targets, the most aggressive of the groups suddenly went off-line early Tuesday.

[…]

Gone was the publicly available “happy blog” the group maintained, listing some of its victims and the group’s earnings from its digital extortion schemes. Internet security groups said the custom-made sites ­- think of them as virtual conference rooms — where victims negotiated with REvil over how much ransom they would pay to get their data unlocked also disappeared. So did the infrastructure for making payments.

Okay. So either the US took them down, Russia took them down, or they took themselves down.

Details of the REvil Ransomware Attack

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/07/details-of-the-revil-ransomware-attack.html

ArsTechnica has a good story on the REvil ransomware attack of last weekend, with technical details:

This weekend’s attack was carried out with almost surgical precision. According to Cybereason, the REvil affiliates first gained access to targeted environments and then used the zero-day in the Kaseya Agent Monitor to gain administrative control over the target’s network. After writing a base-64-encoded payload to a file named agent.crt the dropper executed it.

[…]

The ransomware dropper Agent.exe is signed with a Windows-trusted certificate that uses the registrant name “PB03 TRANSPORT LTD.” By digitally signing their malware, attackers are able to suppress many security warnings that would otherwise appear when it’s being installed. Cybereason said that the certificate appears to have been used exclusively by REvil malware that was deployed during this attack.

To add stealth, the attackers used a technique called DLL Side-Loading, which places a spoofed malicious DLL file in a Windows’ WinSxS directory so that the operating system loads the spoof instead of the legitimate file. In the case here, Agent.exe drops an outdated version that is vulnerable to DLL Side-Loading of “msmpeng.exe,” which is the file for the Windows Defender executable.

Once executed, the malware changes the firewall settings to allow local windows systems to be discovered. Then, it starts to encrypt the files on the system….

REvil is demanding $70 million for a universal decryptor that will recover the data from the 1,500 affected Kaseya customers.

More news.

Note that this is yet another supply-chain attack. Instead of infecting those 1,500 networks directly, REvil infected a single managed service provider. And it leveraged a zero-day vulnerability in that provider.

EDITED TO ADD (7/13): Employees warned Kaseya’s management for years about critical security flaws, but they were ignored.

Insurance and Ransomware

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/07/insurance-and-ransomware.html

As ransomware becomes more common, I’m seeing more discussions about the ethics of paying the ransom. Here’s one more contribution to that issue: a research paper that the insurance industry is hurting more than it’s helping.

However, the most pressing challenge currently facing the industry is ransomware. Although it is a societal problem, cyber insurers have received considerable criticism for facilitating ransom payments to cybercriminals. These add fuel to the fire by incentivising cybercriminals’ engagement in ransomware operations and enabling existing operators to invest in and expand their capabilities. Growing losses from ransomware attacks have also emphasised that the current reality is not sustainable for insurers either.

To overcome these challenges and champion the positive effects of cyber insurance, this paper calls for a series of interventions from government and industry. Some in the industry favour allowing the market to mature on its own, but it will not be possible to rely on changing market forces alone. To date, the UK government has taken a light-touch approach to the cyber insurance industry. With the market undergoing changes amid growing losses, more coordinated action by government and regulators is necessary to help the industry reach its full potential.

The interventions recommended here are still relatively light, and reflect the fact that cyber insurance is only a potential incentive for managing societal cyber risk.They include: developing guidance for minimum security standards for underwriting; expanding data collection and data sharing; mandating cyber insurance for government suppliers; and creating a new collaborative approach between insurers and intelligence and law enforcement agencies around ransomware.

Finally, although a well-functioning cyber insurance industry could improve cyber security practices on a societal scale, it is not a silver bullet for the cyber security challenge. It is important to remember that the primary purpose of cyber insurance is not to improve cyber security, but to transfer residual risk. As such, it should be one of many tools that governments and businesses can draw on to manage cyber risk more effectively.

Basically, the insurance industry incents companies to do the cheapest mitigation possible. Often, that’s paying the ransom.

News article.

Ransomware Profitability

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/02/ransomware-profitability.html

Analyzing cryptocurrency data, a research group has estimated a lower-bound on 2020 ransomware revenue: $350 million, four times more than in 2019.

Based on the company’s data, among last year’s top earners, there were groups like Ryuk, Maze (now-defunct), Doppelpaymer, Netwalker (disrupted by authorities), Conti, and REvil (aka Sodinokibi).

Ransomware is now an established worldwide business.

Slashdot thread.

Police Have Disrupted the Emotet Botnet

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/01/police-have-disrupted-the-emotet-botnet.html

A coordinated effort has captured the command-and-control servers of the Emotet botnet:

Emotet establishes a backdoor onto Windows computer systems via automated phishing emails that distribute Word documents compromised with malware. Subjects of emails and documents in Emotet campaigns are regularly altered to provide the best chance of luring victims into opening emails and installing malware ­ regular themes include invoices, shipping notices and information about COVID-19.

Those behind the Emotet lease their army of infected machines out to other cyber criminals as a gateway for additional malware attacks, including remote access tools (RATs) and ransomware.

[…]

A week of action by law enforcement agencies around the world gained control of Emotet’s infrastructure of hundreds of servers around the world and disrupted it from the inside.

Machines infected by Emotet are now directed to infrastructure controlled by law enforcement, meaning cyber criminals can no longer exploit machines compromised and the malware can no longer spread to new targets, something which will cause significant disruption to cyber-criminal operations.

[…]

The Emotet takedown is the result of over two years of coordinated work by law enforcement operations around the world, including the Dutch National Police, Germany’s Federal Crime Police, France’s National Police, the Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, the UK’s National Crime Agency, and the National Police of Ukraine.

On the Evolution of Ransomware

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/12/on-the-evolution-of-ransomware.html

Good article on the evolution of ransomware:

Though some researchers say that the scale and severity of ransomware attacks crossed a bright line in 2020, others describe this year as simply the next step in a gradual and, unfortunately, predictable devolution. After years spent honing their techniques, attackers are growing bolder. They’ve begun to incorporate other types of extortion like blackmail into their arsenals, by exfiltrating an organization’s data and then threatening to release it if the victim doesn’t pay an additional fee. Most significantly, ransomware attackers have transitioned from a model in which they hit lots of individuals and accumulated many small ransom payments to one where they carefully plan attacks against a smaller group of large targets from which they can demand massive ransoms. The antivirus firm Emsisoft found that the average requested fee has increased from about $5,000 in 2018 to about $200,000 this year.

Ransomware is a decades-old idea. Today, it’s increasingly profitable and professional.

On That Dusseldorf Hospital Ransomware Attack and the Resultant Death

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/11/on-that-dusseldorf-hospital-ransomware-attack-and-the-resultant-death.html

Wired has a detailed story about the ransomware attack on a Dusseldorf hospital, the one that resulted in an ambulance being redirected to a more distant hospital and the patient dying. The police wanted to prosecute the ransomware attackers for negligent homicide, but the details were more complicated:

After a detailed investigation involving consultations with medical professionals, an autopsy, and a minute-by-minute breakdown of events, Hartmann believes that the severity of the victim’s medical diagnosis at the time she was picked up was such that she would have died regardless of which hospital she had been admitted to. “The delay was of no relevance to the final outcome,” Hartmann says. “The medical condition was the sole cause of the death, and this is entirely independent from the cyberattack.” He likens it to hitting a dead body while driving: while you might be breaking the speed limit, you’re not responsible for the death.

So while this might not be an example of death by cyberattack, the article correctly notes that it’s only a matter of time:

But it’s only a matter of time, Hartmann believes, before ransomware does directly cause a death. “Where the patient is suffering from a slightly less severe condition, the attack could certainly be a decisive factor,” he says. “This is because the inability to receive treatment can have severe implications for those who require emergency services.” Success at bringing a charge might set an important precedent for future cases, thereby deepening the toolkit of prosecutors beyond the typical cybercrime statutes.

“The main hurdle will be one of proof,” Urban says. “Legal causation will be there as soon as the prosecution can prove that the person died earlier, even if it’s only a few hours, because of the hack, but this is never easy to prove.” With the Düsseldorf attack, it was not possible to establish that the victim could have survived much longer, but in general it’s “absolutely possible” that hackers could be found guilty of manslaughter, Urban argues.

And where causation is established, Hartmann points out that exposure for criminal prosecution stretches beyond the hackers. Instead, anyone who can be shown to have contributed to the hack may also be prosecuted, he says. In the Düsseldorf case, for example, his team was preparing to consider the culpability of the hospital’s IT staff. Could they have better defended the hospital by monitoring the network more closely, for instance?

Negotiating with Ransomware Gangs

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/09/negotiating-with-ransomware-gangs.html

Really interesting conversation with someone who negotiates with ransomware gangs:

For now, it seems that paying ransomware, while obviously risky and empowering/encouraging ransomware attackers, can perhaps be comported so as not to break any laws (like anti-terrorist laws, FCPA, conspiracy and others) ­ and even if payment is arguably unlawful, seems unlikely to be prosecuted. Thus, the decision whether to pay or ignore a ransomware demand, seems less of a legal, and more of a practical, determination ­ almost like a cost-benefit analysis.

The arguments for rendering a ransomware payment include:

  • Payment is the least costly option;
  • Payment is in the best interest of stakeholders (e.g. a hospital patient in desperate need of an immediate operation whose records are locked up);
  • Payment can avoid being fined for losing important data;
  • Payment means not losing highly confidential information; and
  • Payment may mean not going public with the data breach.

The arguments against rendering a ransomware payment include:

  • Payment does not guarantee that the right encryption keys with the proper decryption algorithms will be provided;
  • Payment further funds additional criminal pursuits of the attacker, enabling a cycle of ransomware crime;
  • Payment can do damage to a corporate brand;
  • Payment may not stop the ransomware attacker from returning;
  • If victims stopped making ransomware payments, the ransomware revenue stream would stop and ransomware attackers would have to move on to perpetrating another scheme; and
  • Using Bitcoin to pay a ransomware attacker can put organizations at risk. Most victims must buy Bitcoin on entirely unregulated and free-wheeling exchanges that can also be hacked, leaving buyers’ bank account information stored on these exchanges vulnerable.

When confronted with a ransomware attack, the options all seem bleak. Pay the hackers ­ and the victim may not only prompt future attacks, but there is also no guarantee that the hackers will restore a victim’s dataset. Ignore the hackers ­ and the victim may incur significant financial damage or even find themselves out of business. The only guarantees during a ransomware attack are the fear, uncertainty and dread inevitably experienced by the victim.

Documented Death from a Ransomware Attack

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/09/documented-death-from-a-ransomware-attack.html

A Dusseldorf woman died when a ransomware attack against a hospital forced her to be taken to a different hospital in another city.

I think this is the first documented case of a cyberattack causing a fatality. UK hospitals had to redirect patients during the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack, but there were no documented fatalities from that event.

The police are treating this as a homicide.