81 percent of financially motivated attacks are ransomware

Ransomware made up 81 percent of all financially motivated cyberattacks in 2020, according to a new report from Atlas VPN.

The remainder of attacks comprised a variety of approaches including point-of-sale intrusions, eCommerce attacks, business email compromise, and cryptocurrency mining.

The most lucrative attack was against Garmin, a multinational technology company, believed to have paid $10 million to its hackers. Garmin was targeted by WastedLocker, ransomware credited to a Russia-based cybercriminal group called Evil Corp. The next biggest ransom payout to cybercriminals in 2020 belongs to a business travel management company CWT Global. Cybercriminals behind the attack used Ragnar Locker and collected a payment of $4.5 million. In third place is Travelex, a British foreign exchange firm, the Sodinokibi gang, also known as REvil, is said to be responsible for this attack. Travelex paid the criminal group $2.3 million.

Other organizations paying a significant ransom to cybercriminals last year include the University of California San Francisco ($1.14 million), as well as Communications and Power Industries ($0.5 million).

Rachel Welch, COO of Atlas VPN, says, "It is hard to predict whether this year's ransomware attack levels will surpass the ones of 2020. However, as global companies continue to fall into the traps of ransomware attacks, it is safe to say they are not going anywhere."

You can read more on the Atlas VPN blog.

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