Costs Associated with Ransomware Infections Skyrocket

Combatting malware infections is often a hard and thankless task made increasingly difficult by hackers. This task is made harder when attackers change tactics. When the costs associated with infections, such as data recovery, increase more stress is placed on organizations and those that defend the organizations. The latest report by Coveware shows that ransom amounts demanded in ransomware incidents has risen approximately 90%. Not only will departments responsible for cybersecurity curse the news but financial managers as well. Coveware's Ransomware Marketplace Report involved analysis of recent ransomware cases the security firm has investigated. Figures from the investigation showed that the average ransom organizations paid per incident during the first quarter of this year stands at 12,762 USD, compared to 6,733 USD in the final quarter of 2018. This shows that the ransom cost associated with ransomware in...

GANDCRAB 5.3 Ransomware

Discovered by Jakub Kroustek, GANDCRAB 5.3 (also known as GANDCRAB V5.3) is a high-risk ransomware that belongs to GANDCRAB malware family. After successful infiltration, GANDCRAB 5.3 encrypts most of stored data and appends filenames with a random-string extension. For instance, encrypted "sample.jpg" would be renamed to something like "sample.jpg.awqrsj". Additionally, GANDCRAB 5.3 changes victim's desktop wallpaper and drops a text file (e.g., "AWQRSJ-MANUAL.txt") in every existing folder. GANDCRAB 5.3's desktop wallpaper delivers a short message stating that data is encrypted and can only be restored with a unique decryption tool (created by developers of GANDCRAB 5.3) which victims must buy. Wallpaper also encourages victims to read the created text file for detailed instructions. The text file also states that data is encrypted and can only be restored by using a unique decryption key which, again, v...