Monitoring cyberthreats over time reveals interesting insights into the strategies used by cybercriminals and the evolution of the attack vectors they target. While the threat landscape continues to be quite diversified, trends do seem to run in predictable cycles. For example, over the last year or so ransomware has risen to become one of the most dominant threats plaguing organizations, especially in the market sectors of healthcare, finance, and education.
As more and more cybercriminals have jumped on the bandwagon, ransomware as a service and dozens of variations targeting organizations across the globe have practically turned it into a commodity. As it has evolved it has leveraged new delivery channels such as social engineering, new techniques such as multi-stage attacks to evade detection and infect systems, and new methods of payment often involving fledgling cryptocurrencies.
For example, GandCrab ransomware emerged in January with the distinction of being the first ransomware to require Dash cryptocurrency as a payment.
