Ransomware victims paid over $25 million to recover files

Ransomware victims have paid more than $25 million in the past two years to get their data back, a new study by Google has shown.

The report, made by researchers at Google, Chainalysis, UC San Diego, and the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, followed the trail of cryptomoney through the blockchain, allowing researchers to get a birds-eye view of the ransomware world.

A total of 34 ransomware families were tracked, but only a handful made most of the profit. This includes Locky, whose epidemic forced more than $7 million in payments.

Locky was the first ransomware to split payment and encryption infrastructure from distribution, allowing it to spread faster and go further.

"Locky’s big advantage was the decoupling of the people who maintain the ransomware from the people who are infecting machines," says NYU professor Damon McCoy, who worked on the project. "Locky just focused on building the malware and support infrastructure. Then they had other botnets spread and distribute the malware, which were much better at that end of the business."

However, the company was not able to confirm how much of that money made it back to the ransomware creators.

The report also says ransomware creators are getting smarter when it comes to avoiding antivirus software. Once a malware is discovered, the software looks for identical binaries. However, if the binary changes, antivirus can no longer identify the malware.

Cerber ransomware, for example, made "thousands of binaries" a month, making it extremely hard to be tracked.

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