These attacks can be catastrophic to business operations and difficult to clean up, requiring complete adversary eviction to protect against future attacks. The real damage is often done when the attack exfiltrates files while leaving backdoors in the network for future malicious activity-and these risks persist whether or not the ransom is paid. Once all of your data is encrypted and recent backups are also of encrypted data, your key is removed so you can no longer read your data. Your backups, though, are of the encrypted data. With your key still available, your data is usable to you and the ransomware goes unnoticed. Ransomware can also slowly encrypt your data while keeping your key on the system.
Ransomware can be staged to exfiltrate your data first, over several weeks or months, before the ransomware actually executes on a specific date. The ransomware leverages the attackers’ knowledge of common system and security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities to infiltrate the organization, navigate the enterprise network, and adapt to the environment and its weaknesses as they go. While early ransomware mostly used malware that spread with phishing or between devices, human-operated ransomware has emerged where a gang of active attackers, driven by human attack operators, target all systems in an organization (rather than a single device or set of devices). Attackers use ransomware to extort money from victims by demanding money, usually in the form of cryptocurrencies, in exchange for a decryption key or in exchange for not releasing sensitive data to the dark web or the public internet. Ransomware is a type of extortion attack that encrypts files and folders, preventing access to important data and systems. Preparing for ransomware also improves resilience to natural disasters and rapid attacks like WannaCry & (Not)Petya.
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