Europol, four years of fighting ransomware
No More Ransom: Europol on the ransomware phenomenon
The continental agency celebrates the fourth anniversary of the launch of a project aimed at remedying it: No More Ransom. For those not aware of it, it takes the form of a portal that can be contacted if you are the victim of an attack that blocks access to infrastructure and documents, asking for a ransom to get back in control. It is in fact a repository that contains tools developed to remedy it, already useful in avoiding payments for an overall estimated value of about 632 million dollars. A total of 163 partners from all over the world participate, a constantly growing number.In recent months it has welcomed 28 new tools created by software houses and expert researchers in security capable to unlock encrypted content from 140 different ransomware families.
Below an extract of the infographic useful for understanding which countries have turned to No More Ransom most frequently, geographically: in the order of South Korea, the United States, Brazil, India and Russia.
As stressed by Europol, the best weapon to counteract the action of ransomware remains in every way to that of prevention, which is in the small gestures responsible for: be wary of emails with suspicious attachments or received from unknown senders, avoid downloading and running software from sources that are not certified, keep their systems and programs updated with the latest security patches.
Among the most important victims of the attacks to which we have also written on these pages in the last year include the u.s. state of Texas , the giant of the oil Pemex , the canadian LifeLabs , the platform Travelex , the steel giant EVRAZ , the law firm in new york GSM&S , the cloud provider Blackbaud , the operator of Telecom Argentina, and only a few days to Garmin .
Source: Europol
