“Over the last few years attackers realized that instead of going through these elaborate hacks – phishing for passwords, breaking into accounts, stealing information, and then selling the data on the internet’s black market for pennies per record – they could simply target individuals and businesses and treat them like an ATM,” says Brian Beyer, CEO and founder of enterprise security firm Red Canary.Īccording to Symantec, the average ransom paid doubled from just under $300 in 2015 to $679 this year. If victims don’t pay up in time, the files are destroyed. The malware, which accounts for nearly 60% of all infections, according to research firm Malwarebytes, then displays a screen demanding hundreds of dollars. The online crooks’ weapon of choice: crypto-ransomware, which encrypts all the data files on a user’s machine, making them inaccessible. Many are simply uninterested or not up to the task.Īdd up all these factors, and the question becomes not why many consumers are losing confidence in the internet, but whether they should have any confidence at all. As we conduct more of our lives online, we’re being asked to become increasingly savvy about computer security. That may be good news for the cybersecurity industry, which is expected to grow more than 10% annually and surpass $200bn worldwide by 2021, according to research firm Markets and Markets.īut it’s bad news for the rest of us. There’s no lack of things to be worried about: organized cybercriminal gangs government surveillance not to mention hack attacks from nation states.
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