What is Ransomware

Ransomware is a cyberattack (a virus) that is used to extort money. Originally, criminals used ransomware to extract payments from individuals for the recovery of personal information. Today, cyberattackers extort payments from businesses for the recovery of sensitive information. No one is immune to ransomware. Criminals have extorted payments for the recovery of medical or personal data from healthcare providers and have locked guests out of their hotel rooms. Even industrial systems may prove to be vulnerable to ransomware.

Early ransomware, called locker ransomware, prevented a victim from accessing a desktop or browser. Cyberattackers quickly evolved to a more sophisticated crypto-ransomware, which encrypts information on computers or mobile devices. Both forms post an extortion notification to the user: purchase decryption software or a decryption key or your data will be lost forever.

Anatomy of a Ransomware Attack

A common form of delivering ransomware is through malicious attachments to email messages. Users are convinced against their better judgment – through social engineering – to open the attachment. The attachment is typically a form of self-installing malware, often called a Trojan or virus dropper file. Once installed, the dropper enrolls in a cyberattacker’s botnet by contacting the botnet command and control (C2). When contacted, the C2 will generate and return encryption-keying material for the ransomware dropper (and possibly additional malicious code). The ransomware dropper will use the keying material to encrypt personal files on the infected device. It then posts an extortion notification, demanding that the victim pay a ransom payment for a key that will decrypt the now inaccessible data.

Many ransomware attackers threaten victims with permanent loss of their personal files if the ransom is not paid within a 24-hour timeframe. To enhance deception, some ransomware notifications impersonate law enforcement or government agencies and represent the extortion as a fine.

Ransomware Exploits the Public Domain Name System

Ransomware droppers sometimes use hard-coded Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to connect to the C2. When droppers use statically configured IP addresses, investigators can use them to quickly identify and disconnect the ransomware botnet C2s. For evasion purposes, more advanced ransomware identifies a C2 by algorithmically generating domain names. Modern ransomware droppers use the domain name system (DNS) to resolve domain names that the cyberattacker changes frequently, thus hiding effectively from investigators.

Don't Pay the Ransom!

Law enforcement and security experts agree: don’t pay the ransom! There is no reason to trust that the cyberattacker will provide you with the means to decrypt your personal files should you pay. The cyberattacker could disappear, continue to extort you or send you decryption keys that do not work.

Proactively Defend Against Ransomware

“Back up” to defend against ransomware. By regularly archiving personal or sensitive data to an external device or cloud, you render a cyberattacker’s threats meaningless. Be particularly careful to back up files when you travel.

Next, use the Internet safely. Consider taking these measures to minimize the likelihood of ransomware infection:

• Keep your laptop “patch current.”
• Do not share folders.
• Keep your antivirus up to date.
• Use a trusted DNS resolver.
• Disable macro execution.
• Try anti-ransom protection.

After that, make sure that you have the means to quickly restore the operating system, applications and archived data to your device in case your device is infected with ransomware. Businesses and individuals alike should investigate what are called image recovery services.

You can protect yourself in other ways; see 22 Ransomware Prevention Tips.

If You Are Held for Ransom…

Remember: don’t pay! Contact a techie friend, a reputable computer repair service or your organization’s IT department to help you identify the ransomware. They can also help you locate trusted repositories for deleted file recovery or rescue disk software, ransomware removal kits or decryptors and online repositories of recovery keys. One such resource is https://www.nomoreransom.org/, which despite its unusual appearance, is reliable.

Don’t Be a Victim

With cyberattackers using more sophisticated means to launch ransomware attacks, users need to be proactive and do everything they can to prevent these attacks from occurring. Be informed. Stay vigilant.

Originally posted 13 Mar 2017 at ICANN Blog.

Comments

[Ransomware_at]

Thank you Dave for this nice summary! But I would like to add, that the infection vector number one at the moment (at least in Europe) is remote access (like RDP). This kind of ransomware often do not use C&C servers. Other ways for infections we see during our investigations are drive-by-downloads, malvertising and supply-chain-attacks.

Concerning RDP I would like to say a few words. The perpetrators scan the internet and try brute-force-attacks (with tools like NLBrute) for getting access to these servers. Companies are very often affected. So I would recommend not to use RDP, if not necessary (there are lots other possibilities for remote access like Teamviewar (with 2FA), etc. If RDP is necessary, RDP should not be configured on a standard Port, better would be using a VPN on the firewall and not exposing the ports outside the LAN at all. Very strong passwords should be applied and there should not be used commonly used login names like "admin", "root", etc. Also an IP whitelisting would help securing the system a lot...

Snowy greetings from Austria,
Christina