Basically, Ransomware is everywhere these days. Why I titled this post as “Running Somewhere …” is because, there is nowhere to hide and no guaranteed recovery of data to which access is denied by Ransomware.

Ransomware, somewhere, everywhere, nowhere.. So many rhyming words isn’t it 😜

Anyways, I was assigned to do a literature review on “The rise of ransomware and proactive measures to detect, prevent and mitigate them” 😅 . I partnered up with Nithushan Francis for this task. Therefore I’m in a really good position to blog about Ransomware.

Like that ☝ slide? Go have a closer look here.

To summerize the content of the literature review

• Ransomware are a type of malware that denies users access to their data and seek ransom to grant them access.
• There are two types of ransomware. Crypto ransomware are ransomware that encrypts data and Locker ransomware that simply denies access to data ( without encryption )
• Initially locker ransomware were the most common ransomware attacks. Nowadays crypto ransomware are much popular than locker ransomware attacks.
• Paying the ransom amount doesn’t guarantee that the victims data will be released.
• WannaCry ransomware that recently took the world by storm was possible thanks to a vulnerability in Windows server SMB.
• Keeping your systems updated will reduce the chance of ransomware attacks on your system. Make sure security patches are applied, soon as they are released by the vendors.
• There are various other frameworks developed to detect and prevent ransomware. But they have problems of their own like performance overheads and therefore aren’t all that applicable for daily usage.
• It is important for a management in an organization to have connections with bodies that govern cybersecurity such as CERT and get their assistance in case of an incident.

For more information about Ransomware, please contact me or leave a comment down below. So that I can get in touch and elaborate 🙂