The Evolution of Ransomware: How Did We Get Here?

[marcelblackbeard]

These days, not a month goes by that we hear about a new major ransomware attack. But how did we get to this point where our data and services could be held for ransom? And with a single attack paying out millions of dollars, should we be hopeful for this trend to ever end?

Permalink to review.

https://www.techspot.com/article/2284-ransomware/

 

[tellmewhy]

Healthcare is way too expensive, so expensive that you probably die helpless without insurance and with so many money they can’t buy few hard disks to make a nas for backups?
Why? Are they have put their prices on assessment and we didn’t see it?

 

[silversea]

What we have here is a failure by our government to realize how important it is to totally eradicate all forms of ransomware, and this can be done by tracking down and permanently eliminating all parties, this would be a great job for our elite forces of the military, Seals, and Special Operations forces and the way it's done is by gathering information, formulating a plan and then destroy the enemy at the source.

 

[Bullwinkle M]

"So how did we get to the point where our data and services could be held for ransom?"

"We" did not ever get to that point!

"You" did!

"My" data and services cannot be held for ransom

I do not use online "services" and my data is well protected with Windows XP

 

[Trapped Nowhere]

I remember the green dot moneypak days. ruined it for everyone else pretty quickly :/

 

[OortCloud]

We got here due to 2 reasons
1) US organisations started paying ransoms - it should be illegal to pay a ransom.
2) Cryptocurrencies make it so easy to launder money.

 

[Ren128]

I got a feeling if a ransomware attack results in a loss of human life, governments will use that as a reason/excuse for banning all Cryptocurrencies.

 

[Aranarth]

I got a feeling if a ransomware attack results in a loss of human life, governments will use that as a reason/excuse for banning all Cryptocurrencies.

I believe that one of the hospital attacks did result in at least one person's death.
I think it was a woman in Germany...

 

[Aranarth]

Healthcare is way too expensive, so expensive that you probably die helpless without insurance and with so many money they can’t buy few hard disks to make a nas for backups?
Why? Are they have put their prices on assessment and we didn’t see it?

The issue is not that they had no backups.
The article even specifically states the health care has good backups.

The trouble is paving and restoring a server and then restoring from backup.
This takes a serious amount of time.

Imagaine all you have is a data backup, now hand me your hard drive so I drill a hole in it.
How long will it take you to get your machine backup and running again?

Now tripple that for a server so you can wipe and rebuild the raid array and reconfigure windows, install your programs, restore from backup, and the amount of time you need for ONE computer multiply that for all the machines in teh hospital say one for every room and 4-5 for each nurses station. how much time is this??

Speaking from experience we are talking a day or two for each server, 2-4 hours per machine.
Say you have 100 patient rooms and 20 nurses stations, and 10 servers...

20 to 40 man hour days for the servers, 240 to 480 man hours for all the machines.

And you have to start with the network first, no computers can be up until you can confirm the network is clean, then no computers can be on until they are all wiped and reimaged.

We are talking MONTHS of work before everything is back to some semblance of normal and even then nothing will be the same as it was before no matter how hard you try.

Luckily with virtualization and good backups you cut this time down significantly if you are able to pinpoint the breach and fix it (not just location but time as well) maybe you can get back up faster and only drop (lose) a months worth of data.

 

[tscmm1]

So why can't software makers change the game. New operating environment... New encrption methods built to encrpt their own files? Stricter user management? There needs to be a more difficult method that is proactive and not reactive. More network checks and balances?

 

[Tyr Antilles]

Simple solution: enforce law that makes paying ransom illegal regardless of the damage done. End of story. Second solution: ban cryptocurrencies. They are wasting a huge amount of energy without producing anything at all and they are tools for money laundering.

 

[BadThad]

Death penalty for distributing viruses!

 

[Markoni35]

In the era where privacy don't really exist, they are selling us a story about "invisible" hackers that cannot be found, but who can blackmail everyone. LOL. Does anyone really believe that? The only reason why government agencies "cannot" catch them is because those hackers work for them. Either them, or big private corporations who hold government agencies in their pocket. That's the only way they can stay "private".

And BitCoin "privacy"? LOL. Wallets can be traced, BC conversion to goods or real money can be traced, eventually all the transactions can be traced, since the system basically memorizes all the transactions. One can use proxies and mediators to get cash (because cash is really hard to trace), but if someone wants, they can find the mediators, and then the final client.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Moral of the story:

Always run a virtual machine on your PC.

 

[Bullwinkle M]

Moral of the story:

Always run a virtual machine on your PC.

or Windows XP

There are still no known variants of ransomware that can successfully encrypt my XP Box!