GuidePoint Ransomware Report Observes 80 Percent Increase in Activity, Escalations

February 5, 2024 – Published on Remote Work Solutions

Cybersecurity solutions provider GuidePoint Security published its GuidePoint Research and Intelligence Team (GRIT)‘s 2023 Annual Ransomware Report. Data was obtained from publicly available resources, including insight from threat groups and the ransomware threat landscape at large.

In particular, GRIT noted that ransomware victims nearly doubled Y2Y, partially driven by mass exploitation campaigns that targeted hundreds of organizations. This includes 63 distinct ransomware groups leveraging encryption, data exfiltration, data extortion and other techniques to compromise and publicly post 4,519 victims across all 30 of GRIT’s tracked industries, spanning 120 countries.

“Comparing 2023 to 2022 ransomware activity, we saw an 80 percent YoY increase of victim posting,” said Drew Schmitt, Practice Lead, GRIT. “While mass exploitation campaigns contributed substantially to this large increase, we saw a significant increase in ransomware activity overall. New entrants in the ransomware ecosystem had repeated opportunities either through reduced technical barriers such as the recycling of leaked ransomware builders and commodity malware, or the recycling of previously leaked data for attempted re-extortion and claims of attacks that never were. For those established groups with resources and technical expertise, exploitation of high-severity and zero-day vulnerabilities provided a reliable means of exploiting victims at scale, a trend we assess as likely to continue into 2024 as a means of overcoming improvements in security.”

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