FBI claims ransomwares have received at least $140 million ransom from victims
The RSA security conference is currently being held. Some technology giants affected by the epidemic have previously withdrawn from the summit.
However, the FBI still decided to participate in the meeting and share some cases and data, some of which are about the growing ransomware.
Ransomware is a network threat that causes headaches for many enterprises, but due to the rich income, more and more hackers are now participating in the development and operation of ransomware.
By analyzing the flow of bitcoin data, the FBI found that in the past six years (between 10/0/1/2013 and 11/07/2019), victims have paid $140 million in ransoms.
The ransom calculation method is that the FBI monitors the bitcoin address left by the ransomware, and then counts how many bitcoins are transferred to the wallet in total.
In this way, the ransom paid by the victims can be calculated based on the price when the victims paid Bitcoin. The ransoms that have been monitored so far are $140 million.
Of course, this number is only the smallest, because there are many ransomware data that cannot be monitored, so the actual ransom paid may be much higher than this amount.
It is worth noting that there are many victims, especially corporate victims, who are reluctant to disclose the extortion. These companies are worried that the negative news will affect the stock price and so on.
Via: bleepingcomputer
