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Sophos detects ransomware
In an April 17 analysis from its Sophos X-Ops research team, cybersecurity firm Sophos observed an increase in low-cost, primitive ransomware—a boon for aspiring threat actors and a headache for defenders.
It’s far more difficult to find something that there are only twenty copies of in the world, said Christopher Budd, director of threat research at Sophos X-Ops.
The group linked the choices to the cheap handguns that flooded the US firearms market in the 1960s and 1970s, known as junk guns.
Between June 2023 and February 2024, the Sophos team spotted 19 different types of “independently produced, inexpensive, and crudely constructed ransomware.” Some missed clean graphics, while others used programming languages like C# and.NET, which “have a shallower learning curve,” noted the paper.
It seems to be a fairly recent thing,” noting that poor-quality malware has existed for decades.
Varying costs
Sophos discovered one with no price indicated, two open-source models, one for $20 (later reduced to free), and one for 0.5 BTC (about $13K).
According to a 2023 research by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, the cost of a Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) kit “ranges from $40 per month to several thousand dollars.” This article has been indexed from CySecurity News – Latest Information Security and Hacking Incidents