New Security Warning Issued After Ransomware Attacks Increase Globally With The US In The Lead

Ransomware attacks are currently increasing globally and it's the US who happens to be at the forefront.

Security researchers unveiled through recent stats how the US is in the prime position of a threat as more than 43% of the attacks took place in the country and continue to rise as we speak.

The report comes to us thanks to Malwarebytes who added how the study showcased a huge rise between July of last year and June of this year. And it’s the US that seems to be at the forefront of it all. The company adds how the 1900 of those that were reported happened to originate from America and it’s a whopping 75% rise from the previous year’s data.

Other nations that were similarly affected including Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and others continually see a rise in this kind of behavior but still are much less when compared to the US. moreover, the report added how close to 48 groups dealing with ransomware had carried out such kinds of attacks and they were highlighted in the report that was just published.

The list of those who were part of the victims included American firms, government enterprises, and a list of so many others that were outlined in this period. What is even worse is how the attackers didn’t even spare the likes of those institutions that deal with healthcare and education and hence were impacted majorly too.

What is very interesting is how the huge rise in figures that were displayed in the article had to do with those attacks that ended up getting reported. So the real figure could go as high as 1900. And the entire point of this attack was to take ransoms so that more firms could quietly make payments and everything remains hushed undercover.

Now the question is that what does a ransomware incident mean? Well, the latter is a term that’s reserved for denying users and firms access to different files witnessed on computers. What really happens is that software locks things up stringently and after the amount demanded as ransom gets paid, the user would attain decryption keys to attain access again to their files.

As one can imagine, it’s a major shakeup in the digital world and one that’s causing confusion across the board.

One of the main or leading offenders of the group is highlighted as Clop and they’re known for having links to Russia. The latter is a crime-based firm that did arise in the past as well and got notable attention that amps up attacks and the scope related to it.

Then in June of last year, we saw make the most of the vulnerabilities and file transfers that breached so many servers, entailing the biggest pension fund you’ll find in America.

The expert highlighted how the transition toward zero-day software exploitation might delineate a huge alteration in the usual game and also provide an explanation as to why there’s a rise in such incidents as compared to the usual phishing emails involved. The same is the case with downloads that come bombarded with malware.

But that’s for America. What about the rest of the world? We’re seeing the figures for countries like France double in 2022 and then we see some unequal attacks taking place against the government as well.

The United Kingdom saw close to 200 attacks arising from nearly 32 different groups which is certainly a huge amount when compared to stats from previous years.

In 2022, the UK only reported one ransomware incident each month but now, it’s gone up to eight attacks taking place each month.

Read next: New Study Shows How AI is Boosting Ransomware
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World