The largest confirmed payment, so far this year, was the $11 million that JBS SA disclosed after a massive attack in June. Kaseya eventually obtained a universal decryption key, but it’s unclear what payment was made, if any. Additionally, REvil recently tested out a new approach by offering to provide a universal decryption key to all organizations impacted by the Kaseya VSA attack for $70 million, though it quickly dropped the asking price to $50 million. The highest ransom demand of a single victim seen by our consultants rose to $50 million in the first half of 2021 from $30 million last year. Among the dozens of cases that Unit 42 consultants reviewed in the first half of 2021, the average ransom demand was $5.3 million. As they’ve adopted these new extortion approaches, ransomware gangs have gotten greedier. The 2021 Unit 42 Ransomware Threat Report, which covered 2020 trends, flagged double extortion as an emerging practice – and the latest observations show attackers again doubling the number of extortion techniques they use. While it’s rare for one organization to be the victim of all four techniques, this year we have increasingly seen ransomware gangs engage in additional approaches when victims don’t pay up after encryption and data theft.
Encryption: Victims pay to regain access to scrambled data and compromised computer systems that stop working because key files are encrypted.Ransomware operators now commonly use as many as four techniques for pressuring victims into paying: The rise of “quadruple extortion” is one disturbing trend identified by Unit 42 consultants as they handled dozens of ransomware cases in the first half of 2021. Ransomware attacks have prevented us from accessing work computers, pushed up meat prices, led to gasoline shortages, shut down schools, delayed legal cases, prevented some of us from getting our cars inspected and caused some hospitals to turn away patients. We already knew it was getting worse from following the news, and many of us also knew from personal experience. These figures, compiled by the Unit 42 security consulting group, quantify what many of us already know – the ransomware crisis continues to intensify as criminal enterprises boost investment in highly profitable ransomware operations. The increase comes after the average payment last year surged 171% to more than $312,000. The average ransomware payment climbed 82% since 2020 to a record $570,000 in the first half of 2021, as cybercriminals employed increasingly aggressive tactics to coerce organizations into paying larger ransoms.
日本語 (Japanese ) Unit 42 Ransomware Threat Report, 1H 2021 Update