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Barracuda Network finds out how hundreds of elite hackers are waging a war against your wallet.
Cybersecurity experts have suggested that a very small number of "elite" hackers — about a hundred people-are behind almost all ransomware on the Internet.
The conclusion was made on the basis of a study conducted by the Barracuda Network in collaboration with specialists from Columbia University. More than 300,000 ransomware emails were examined, as well as the addresses of cryptocurrency wallets where attackers received a ransom.
It turned out that 80% of all emails are linked to hundreds of the same email addresses. This means that there is a small group of hackers behind them, possibly related to each other. Most often, they require small amounts — less than 2 thousand dollars. Probably with the expectation that the victims will not go to the police and will not attract the attention of banks and tax authorities. Only bitcoin is used to receive the ransom. Cryptocurrency provides fraudsters with a high level of anonymity.
The researchers also analyzed the "sender" field in each email. This way, you can calculate how many messages were sent from one address. The information was then correlated with the number of unique Bitcoin addresses used by certain hackers. For clarity of analysis, Barracuda experts built graphs, breaking them down by the number of emails from one sender.
It was discovered that the same sender can use different cryptographic wallet addresses in their emails. This must be a way to make it harder to track cash flows.
Experts believe that it should now be quite easy to resist Internet scammers. If law enforcement agencies can track down even a small number of hackers, this will already be a big step forward. Second, because ransomware hackers copy each other's actions and follow similar patterns, email security service providers will be able to block most of these attacks with simple detectors. For example, Barracuda Sentinel or Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response can help detect and stop such attacks.
Cybersecurity experts have suggested that a very small number of "elite" hackers — about a hundred people-are behind almost all ransomware on the Internet.
The conclusion was made on the basis of a study conducted by the Barracuda Network in collaboration with specialists from Columbia University. More than 300,000 ransomware emails were examined, as well as the addresses of cryptocurrency wallets where attackers received a ransom.
It turned out that 80% of all emails are linked to hundreds of the same email addresses. This means that there is a small group of hackers behind them, possibly related to each other. Most often, they require small amounts — less than 2 thousand dollars. Probably with the expectation that the victims will not go to the police and will not attract the attention of banks and tax authorities. Only bitcoin is used to receive the ransom. Cryptocurrency provides fraudsters with a high level of anonymity.
The researchers also analyzed the "sender" field in each email. This way, you can calculate how many messages were sent from one address. The information was then correlated with the number of unique Bitcoin addresses used by certain hackers. For clarity of analysis, Barracuda experts built graphs, breaking them down by the number of emails from one sender.
It was discovered that the same sender can use different cryptographic wallet addresses in their emails. This must be a way to make it harder to track cash flows.
Experts believe that it should now be quite easy to resist Internet scammers. If law enforcement agencies can track down even a small number of hackers, this will already be a big step forward. Second, because ransomware hackers copy each other's actions and follow similar patterns, email security service providers will be able to block most of these attacks with simple detectors. For example, Barracuda Sentinel or Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response can help detect and stop such attacks.
