Tracing the destructive path of ransomware's evolution
The year is 1989. “Rain Man” wins the Academy Award for Best Picture. Motorola releases the world’s smallest and lightest phone. The Berlin Wall falls. Taylor Swift is born. It also begins the dawn of a new era of cyber extortion.
The AIDS Trojan arrived innocuously, distributed via floppy disk to public health professionals. But it harbored a nasty surprise. After the 90th PC reboot, it cryptographically locked victims’ hard drives, demanding a $189 payment to unlock files. While this attack was thwarted easily, it changed the game. Over the next 30 years, ransomware proliferated from curiosity to a catastrophic threat fueled by an unrelenting arms race between extortionists and security teams.