Ransomware

Ransomware is a type of malware that’s plagued people and organizations for the last decade. From its origins as a floppy disc release demanding rather insubstantial sums of money via snail mail, the ransomware threat has grown in sophistication and scale. Increasingly large ransoms have turned ransomware into a problem with the potential to paralyze multinational corporations or critical national infrastructure relied on by millions of people.

This report contains a brief overview of relevant observations from 2021 with the aim of providing defenders with an update on trends and developments regarding the ransomware threat.

Relevant trends highlighted in the report include the steady development of new ransomware families and variants, the evolution of ransomware’s capabilities and characteristics, ransomware’s prevalence in the global threat landscape, notable families/variants, and observations from WithSecure’s first-hand experience in helping victims and would-be victims detect and respond to attacks.

Based on these and other observations, it is clear that ransomware is a significant but manageable threat to organizations.