GRC Viewpoint

Ransomware Deployment Continues to Gain Traction and Are Faster than 2021

Recent information suggests that threat actors have accelerated the deployment of ransomware. Recently, the time needed to execute ransomware has been around 94% less. The findings are included in a study by IBM. 

The study found a decline in ransomware’s share of occurrence between 2021 to 2022. However, it is equally worrying that the current ransomware deployments are pretty faster. The incidents were studied between 2019 to 2021. The 94% reduction in deployment rates needs urgent tackling.

READ MORE: BlackMatter Ransomware – A Review of One Of the Most Impactful Ransomware Tool

“One particularly bad way ransomware operators distribute their payload across a network is by compromising domain controllers. A small percentage, approximately 4%, of network penetration test findings by X-Force Red revealed entities that had misconfigurations in Active Directory that could leave them open to privilege escalation or total domain takeover. In 2022, X-Force also observed more aggressive ransomware attacks on the underlying infrastructure, such as ESXi and Hyper-V,” says the report.

READ MORE: New Warnings Issued by Microsoft Regarding Ransomware Attacks from an Iranian Hacker Group

According to IBM, there were 100% more monthly efforts to hijack threads in 2022 than in 2021.

The survey was based on analyzing a massive number of endpoints in 2022. “The potentially high impact of these attack methods underscores the importance of securing domain controllers and hypervisors properly”, adds the report. 

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