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Nearly 64 per cent of Indian organisations surveyed were hit by ransomware attacks in 2023, a latest report by Sophos said on Tuesday, noting that while the attack rates fell year-on-year, the impact on victims actually intensified. The average ransom demand was USD 4.8 million, with 62 per cent of demands exceeding USD 1 million. The median ransom paid was USD 2 million, the report by the global cybersecurity solutions provider said. Put simply, ransomware refers to malicious software or malware that seizes files on a computer, network share, backups, and server, and encrypts them, following which the attacker exhorts the user to cough up money to unlock the files. Typically, ransomware attacks come with a timeline, threatening users that if ransomware demands are not fulfilled, the users will lose files. According to the 'State of Ransomware in India 2024' report by Sophos, there has been a decrease in the rate of ransomware attacks against Indian organisations from the 73 per c
India, which detected over 2 lakh ransomware attacks in 2023, is likely to see similar onslaughts, cyber security firm Kaspersky said on Wednesday. Kaspersky General Manager for South Asia Jaydeep Singh said researches conducted by the firm have shown that India is consistently among the top 12 targeted countries and territories for Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). "For three years in a row, file encryption has been the top problem faced by enterprises and organisations worldwide and in India. From the basic ransomware attacks like the Wannacry in 2017, we have reached the era of Ransomware 3.0 where we see triple extortion in the form of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), reselling of data, and public blackmailing. "This form of attack has a wider impact on the financial and reputation aspect of Indian companies," Singh said. Kaspersky claims to have detected over 2 lakh ransomware incidents on businesses in the country in 2023. According to the company, major ransomware gr
The confidential documents stolen from schools and dumped online by ransomware gangs are raw, intimate and graphic. They describe student sexual assaults, psychiatric hospitalisations, abusive parents, truancy even suicide attempts. Please do something, begged a student in one leaked file, recalling the trauma of continually bumping into an ex-abuser at a school in Minneapolis. Other victims talked about wetting the bed or crying themselves to sleep. Complete sexual assault case folios containing these details were among more than 300,000 files dumped online in March after the 36,000-student Minneapolis Public Schools refused to pay a USD 1 million ransom. Other exposed data included medical records and discrimination complaints. Rich in digitised data, the nation's schools are prime targets for far-flung criminal hackers, who are assiduously locating and scooping up sensitive files. Often strapped for cash, districts are grossly ill-equipped not just to defend themselves but to
Cybersecurity agencies in Europe are warning of ransomware attacks exploiting a 2-year-old computer bug as Italy experienced widespread internet outages. The Italian premier's office said on Sunday night the attacks affecting computer systems in the country involved ransomware already in circulation" in a product made by cloud technology provider VMware. A Friday technical bulletin from a French cybersecurity agency said the attack campaigns target VMware ESXi hypervisors, which are used to monitor virtual machines. Palo Alto, California-based VMware fixed the bug back in February 2021 but the attacks are targeting older, unpatched versions of the product. The company said in a statement Sunday that its customers should take action to apply the patch if they have not already done so. Security hygiene is a key component of preventing ransomware attacks, it said. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Sunday it is working with our public and private sector par