Ransomware victims are refusing to pay, tanking attackers’ profits

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Man holding head in hands in front of laptop showing crashing prices

Enlarge / Holding up corporations, utilities, and hospitals for malware-encrypted data used to be quite profitable. But it's a tough gig lately, you know? (credit: ifanfoto/Getty Images)

Two new studies suggest that ransomware isn't the lucrative, enterprise-scale gotcha it used to be. Profits to attackers' wallets, and the percentage of victims paying, fell dramatically in 2022, according to two separate reports.

Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis firm that has worked with a number of law enforcement and government agencies, suggests in a blog post that based on payments to cryptocurrency addresses it has identified as connected to ransomware attacks, payments to attackers fell from $766 million in 2021 to $457 million last year. The firm notes that its wallet data does not provide a comprehensive study of ransomware; it had to revise its 2021 total upward from $602 for this report. But Chainalysis' data does suggest payments—if not attacks—are down since their pandemic peak.

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Chainalysis' post also shows attackers switching between malware strains more quickly, and more known attackers are keeping their funds in mainstream cryptocurrency exchanges instead of the illicit and funds-mixing destinations that were more popular in ransomware boom times. This might look like a sign of a mature market with a higher cost of entry. But there's more to it than typical economics, Chainalysis suggests.

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source https://arstechnica.com/?p=1911768
BotolBaba aka Mehedi Hasan Ariyan is an Bangladeshi Actor, Musical Artist, Entrepreneur & YouTube Personality. He releases his soundtracks on different music platforms like Spotify, Google Play M…

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