{"id":13442,"date":"2016-05-25T23:59:22","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T23:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tricks-collections.com\/?p=13442"},"modified":"2016-05-25T23:59:22","modified_gmt":"2016-05-25T23:59:22","slug":"ransomware-on-the-rise-highest-payouts-to-cyber-criminals-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tricks-collections.com\/ransomware-on-the-rise-highest-payouts-to-cyber-criminals-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Ransomware on the Rise – Highest Payouts to Cyber Criminals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine you\u2019re chugging away at work when your computer dings; you\u2019ve got mail. It\u2019s your boss. He needs you to download an attachment, so you do. Uh-oh that cleverly disguised email was just that \u2013 a disguise. It was spam, and you\u2019ve actually downloaded ransomware onto your business computer, which threatens the entire network. Everything remains blocked until such a time that a ransom is paid or the system is restored to a previous backup.<\/p>

Because of its sophistication, ransomware is a popular choice for hackers looking to make a quick buck. In Canada, the above-mentioned scenario actually happened a lot<\/em>. Hackers were able to hack into corporate computer systems by first posing as the employee\u2019s boss. They used the executive\u2019s public social media profiles to appear that they were who they were posing as. All-in-all, the ransomware attack<\/a>s scored big for hackers who were able to force the businesses to pay up in bitcoin, lest lose their data.<\/p>

\"Ransomware<\/p>

Canada\u2019s Anti-Fraud Centre, a federal government agency, says ransomware cost Canada $19 million in 2014. Daniel Williams, an employee of the agency reports that less than three percent of ransomware cases are even reported, and that losses are closer to $1 billion. The secret to not falling victim is comprehensive cybersecurity, including a dns firewall<\/a> which is more flexible and prevents damage and data exfiltration caused by phishing.<\/p>

JP Morgan, Chase & Co., Fidelity and The Wall Street Journal<\/h2>

It was the largest cyber-attack of financial firms<\/a> in the history of the United States. There\u2019s no exact dollar amount for how much the three hackers stole, but they were running payment processors to the tune of $18 million. The criminals concealed at least $100 million in foreign bank accounts.<\/p>

They made these huge sums of money by \u201cpumping up stock prices, running online casinos, payment processing for criminals, managing an illegal bitcoin exchange, and the laundering of money through at least 75 shell companies and accounts around the world,\u201d reports IB Times. US Attorney Preet Bharara said \u201cIt is no longer merely for a quick payout, but hacking to support a diversified criminal conglomerate.\u201d<\/p>

Hollywood Hospital Forced to Pay $17,000<\/h2>

The Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center didn\u2019t expect to find their systems held hostage earlier this year. They didn\u2019t participate in best practices, such as backing up their data every night. So when the hacking encrypted their data, there was no way to access emails, digital patient records, or even operate some medical devices. Everything was down for two weeks until authorities suggested they go ahead and pay the ransom, at which time the hackers sent them the decryption code.<\/p>

If the hospital had backups, they wouldn\u2019t have been forced to pay. Backing up is easy and there are free cloning tools to make it even easier. Don\u2019t face the same fate as those who\u2019ve ended up paying the ransom to hackers; instead, do a nightly backup and ensure you always have fresh copies of your data.<\/p>

Hackers Make More Money than the Average Household Salary<\/h2>

According to MarketWatch<\/a>, \u201cA hacker can rake in $90,000 in just one month.\u201d The median household income in the United States is $52,000 per year. So that\u2019s about 20 times more than the average household\u2019s earnings that hackers are earning<\/em>; although, it\u2019s hard to call stolen funds earnings.<\/p>

It\u2019s definitely a problem, and it needs to be solved. Your best defense against ransomware is cybersecurity that is built to deal with these complicated malware issues.<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine you\u2019re chugging away at work when your computer dings; you\u2019ve got mail. It\u2019s your boss. He needs you to download an attachment, so you do. Uh-oh that cleverly disguised email was just that \u2013 a disguise. It was spam, and you\u2019ve actually downloaded ransomware onto your business computer, which threatens the entire network. Everything […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[840],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tricks-collections.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13442"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tricks-collections.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tricks-collections.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tricks-collections.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tricks-collections.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13442"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/tricks-collections.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13445,"href":"http:\/\/tricks-collections.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13442\/revisions\/13445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tricks-collections.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tricks-collections.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tricks-collections.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}