What have been the most common ransomware in recent months?

Researchers security, specializing in monitoring and analysis ransomware attacks, they noticed that there was a their sharp increase in recent months compared to the first six months of 2020.

According to recent reports Check Point and IBM Security X-Force Incident Response, the most used ransomware during this period, are Maze, Ryuk and REvil (Sodinokibi).

Both companies have seen a significant increase in ransomware attacks between June and September.

Healthcare: The main goal of ransomware

Check Point researchers they discovered that in the third quarter of 2020, the ransomware gangs that carried out the most attacks were Maze and Ryuk. In fact, the Ryuk ransomware targeted an average of 20 companies per week.

The Ryuk gang intensified its activities in July and focused mainly on organizations health care. It should be noted that hospitals and related organizations face many challenges in recent months due to COVID-19. The ransomware gangs they target them because they know they are likely to succumb and pay the ransom after they systems they can not be closed for a long time.

Check Point says that ransomware attacks increased by 50%, worldwide in the third quarter of 2020. Ryuk and Maze ransomware were the most common threats. In the US, these attacks have almost doubled. The following is a list of countries most affected by ransomware attacks this time:

• US (98,1% increase)
• India (39,2% increase)
• Sri Lanka (436% increase)
• Russia (increase of 57,9%)
• Turkey (increase 32,5%)

According to IBM, the month with the most attacks was June. One-third of all attacks identified by September were then recorded.

The company's researchers said that Maze ransomware accounted for 12% of all ransomware attacks identified during 2020.

But the most common ransomware in 2020 was Sodinokibi (REvil), who was responsible for 29% of cases analyzed by the researchers.

IBM says the Sodinokibi gang has been targeting too many victims lately. Most are located in the USA. THE company estimates that 36% of the victims paid the ransom.

The third most common ransomware, according to IBM, was EKANS (Snake) Responsible for 6% of attacks.

According to Bleeping Computer, ransomware attacks is extremely profitable for cyber criminals. Therefore, this threat will not disappear soon. In fact, now that ransomware gangs are stealing data and threatening to leak it, the chances of a ransom being paid are even higher.

The Companies must be prepared and maintained offline backups, so that they can at least restore the data them for free.