Ransomware attacks on businesses spike 65% in 2023

October 3, 2023 – WISH-TV | Indianapolis News

There has been a spike in the number of ransomware attacks across the globe, according to cyber security experts at GuidePoint Security.

There has been a 65% increase in the number of publicly posted ransomware victims globally compared to this time last year.

“We’re already at almost 2,900 public victims of ransomware and that’s just public victims. We’re not seeing the victims that are getting hit with ransomware and then paying that ransom demand because they don’t ever get posted to a leak site,” Drew Schmitt, a cyber security expert, said.

Schmitt gave I-Team 8 a behind-the-scenes look at how a ransomware attack unfolds. Once a hacker gains access to a company, they typically make copies of the company’s data and encrypts it. They then send the company a message to start the extortion process.

More and more attacks are being done by individuals using ransomware created by bigger groups.

“It could be an individual that is in Russia, it could be somebody in the U.K. Maybe even somebody in the United States. They could be anywhere in the world, so it makes a lot of these groups a lot more distributed,” said Schmitt.

Once a company has been hit, hackers use real-time chats to negotiate the ransom with specific information about how much they think the company can pay.

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