Introduction to ransomware malware
Cyber-attacks have perverted in the last years, nasty form known as ‘ransomware ‘been introduced. The criminals do not hide that they have hacked a user’s system, rather they come in form of an extortion and just lock some out of the system. They then threaten the owner to expose the data to the world or even destroy the data totally. The recovery from the attack involves some embarrassments about the vulnerabilities of corporate been exposed or some security alerts. It actually came up as a result of education improvement and the users of computers and those work in the antivirus companies as well as the professionals in computer security. The removing of ransomware it’s actually a business and there is actually need to have a company which is professional and the one that normal operations go back to securely. Currently the authors of ransomware improve the programs of file encryption daily and infections to android and big organizations making it hard to avoid.
The nuisance nature of ransomware since people are in risk of loss of important data, even when the infected computers still can be in use this really has an impact on productivity.[1]
- Variants of ransomware
Spam messages were used in spread of the malware where it used to the files of a user by a public key encryption known as the RSA. And demand someone to pay in order to get the decryption key. The software was brought down by Tovar operation by bringing down its controlling botnet. The operation was able to discover the private keys which were used for encryption of the files
The is a malware which rose a year after the Crypto Locker and was claimed to be one of its variants, and Targets mostly the video games. For its encryption uses the AES algorithm. Its distributions are specifically through a kit know as Angler and attacks the vulnerabilities of adobe. After the exploitation of the vulnerability the malware it installs itself in the temp folder of Microsoft.
Is a kind of malicious software spread by spam campaigns in the email and mainly targets the messages delivered through email to a certain place.in encrypting its files it uses the AES algorithm. The malware collects the addresses associated with the email from the affected book of addresses and spread the malicious software beyond computer which is initially infected.
- wanna cry
It is a malware that has attacked over 125000 organizations in over than 150 countries. After Microsoft implementation of the SMB rule and releasing a patch for the defect many did not install it where wannacry saw this as a hole and took advantage. It spread across on the networked devices because for more infection no user interaction is required.[2]
The impact of ransomware on the society
It is a malware spread by an update on adobe flash which is really fake on the websites which are compromised. It has affected many organizations in Eastern Europe.
It’s a malicious software in a computer that locks up user’s files and have to be unlocked by use of a key from attackers who force you to pay some huge amount of money in order for you to get the key
1.After the malware landing on your computer through a download or an attachment on an email which is dangerous. The malicious software attacks the fault in the operating system and runs on your machine a code which is harmful. It focuses on the backup files on the system of the victim and detach them to avoid the backup restoration
Your personal files are encrypted by ransomware, by mixing up the contents
such in a way that they are unreadable and denies to give the encryption undo key.
3 The attacker’s insistence for a payment through an online currency which is anonymous known as Bitcoin, and its users are identifiable through some code known as “Bitcoin addresses”
- Potential threats posed by ransomware
- There is some fear by the victims of losing their files
- They also experience some financial loss for the payments made to the ransom[3]
- There is also productivity loss
- There are some costs in IT and legal fees
- There are some modifications in the networks
- The recent attack
- The huge data breaches-it was a cyberattack in the year 2017 on a reporting agency known as the “Equifax credit”, which involved the theft of dates of birth, numbers of social security and other data mostly about the U.S. population and this was a clear evidence that attackers when they target they think big. In 2018 most companies especially that hold more of information which is sensitive are on their sights
- Mining cryptocurrencies
This are the attackers reportedly from North Korea, who targeted the owner’s digital currencies such as Bitcoin. It also involved the stealing of the processing power of a computer. The hacking of public WI-FI in Argentina a place known as Starbucks and hacking of computers at oil pipeline company in Russia are the recent cases.
- In May 2017 there was the major cyber attacker. The wannaCry ransomware stormed through the web with main effect being in Europe whereby it caused a damage in windows. 200,000 computers were affected within the first few hours. It affected large organizations such as Renault and NHS.
- There are also some other viruses known as the “External Blue” which was developed in US. It infected silently some computers in Ukraine after the downloading of a certain tax package which was popular by some certain users. Someone’s computer is free zed until a certain amount of “$US300” is paid in form of a bitcoin[4]
- Mitigation tools
- recommend the use of antivirus that are paid for and includes and automatic updating of its modules
2.recommend users to understand ‘the traffic-filtering solution’, its importance as it can give anti-ransomware protection
3.Suspending the malicious process this involves the temporal stoppage of a process that can be malicious and some analysis either manually or automatically. You can either ask for the decision of the user by ensuring that there is no any harm caused by the process until the user’s action is taken.[5]
4.recommend to use whitelisting software -this expounds what is supposed to run on any computer other than just blocking of the malicious process which are known. This keeps track of big amounts of viruses which are modified slightly
5.recommend the use of networking segmentation which it pursues the protection of infrastructure in the IT sector of the organization by looking at the scope of resources which can be accessed by the cyber intruders.[6]
The Ransom Free is an example of process suspension. Importance of killing the process it ensures that there is right away stoppage of the malicious process
- summary
Ransomware is a malware that takes hostage for files and demand a payment for their release, mainly targeting corporations, individuals and most organizations such as schools and hospitals The malware also has some errors that makes it less effective. Some of the errors include kills Switch which are unintended, and failure to remove from memory the keys of decryption
It a role for all the business –owners, the makers of decision, users to disrupt ransomware because it has caused blackmailing to a global scale. There are really a lot of many simple things we can do to mitigate this malicious software because we are not actually powerless. The cyber criminals have influence on one’s information and one’s security as given to them. Most of these criminals’ big states hire them not to only target on financial objectives but also strategic interests.
Users should have some software’s that detects ransomware but not just only the detections of signatures. Examples of the soft wares include” Emsisoft Anti-Malware “has some detection behavior that curbs if not all but most of ransomware infections from affecting the computer.
Also users should make use of certain basic computer practices which are very important in most cases. These practices include
- Backing up personal data
- Failure to open of attachment without clear information about their source
- Scanning of attachments with some tools like the “Virus Total”
- Making sure that users operating system is up to date
- Use of passwords which are hard and never use similar password for multiples accounts
References
[1] G. L. White, “Education and prevention relationships on security incidents for home computers,” J. Comput. Inf. Syst., vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 29–37, 2015.
[2] S. Thakkar, “Ransomware-Exploring the Electronic form of Extortion,” Int. J. Sci. Res. Dev., pp. 123–125, 2014.
[3] A. Bhardwaj, “Ransomware: A rising threat of new age digital extortion,” in Online Banking Security Measures and Data Protection, IGI Global, 2017, pp. 189–221.
[4] J. Wyke and A. Ajjan, “The current state of ransomware,” SophosLabs Tech. Pap., 2015.
[5] E. Pazik, “Ransomware: Attack Vectors, Mitigation and Recovery,” Utica College, 2017.
[6] R. Richardson and M. North, “Ransomware: Evolution, mitigation and prevention,” Int. Manag. Rev., vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 10–21, 2017.
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