The biggest online threat to businesses and consumers today is ransomware, a category of malware that can encrypt your computer files until you pay a ransom to unlock them. With this practical book, you’ll learn how easily ransomware infects your system and what steps you can take to stop the attack before it sets foot in the network. Security experts Allan Liska and Timothy Gallo explain how the success of these attacks has spawned not only several variants of ransomware, but also a litany of ever-changing ways they’re delivered to targets. You’ll learn pragmatic methods for responding quickly to a ransomware attack, as well as how to protect yourself from becoming infected in the first place. Learn how ransomware enters your system and encrypts your files Understand why ransomware use has grown, especially in recent years Examine the organizations behind ransomware and the victims they target Learn how wannabe hackers use Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) to launch campaigns Understand how ransom is paid—and the pros and cons of paying Use methods to protect your organization’s workstations and servers

Academic Paper from the year 2023 in the subject Computer Science - IT-Security, grade: A, , language: English, abstract: Ransomware attacks are not a new idea, but their prevalence has risen dramatically in recent times. A key explanation for this is the financial compensation that the perpetrator stands to gain, as well as the fact that crypto-currency allows for anonymous transactions. Initially a single-host menace, ransomware is rapidly developing to conduct more sophisticated attacks by spreading through a network of hosts. One of the most difficult aspects of defending from these attacks is that every ransomware caucus is always evolving, rendering individual samples unidentifiable. Common signature-based countermeasures, such as those used to fight viruses, are made ineffective as a result. Furthermore, attempting to reverse engineer each sample in order to develop successful countermeasures or solutions is an expensive venture. Much more so now that ransomware writers are beginning to use complicated methods ensuring that getting to the original source code more difficult. The researcher believes that a more general detection approach can be used to find a solution. It should be focused on the traits that all ransomware families share. This should help to shift the focus of research from samples to families. I collect meta-data about the files that are read and written during ransomware attacks using easy and fast metrics and applied a qualitative mode of data collection. These attacks have a common pattern of attempting to encrypt all of the victims' data. Encrypted files have a significant increase in entropy while the data size remains relatively unchanged. These characteristics can also be seen in normal user behaviour, such as when a user encrypts a file. As a result, we must allow encryption while also imposing a frequency limit to ensure that regular user traffic does not result in false positives.

Malware analysis is big business, and attacks can cost a company dearly. When malware breaches your defenses, you need to act quickly to cure current infections and prevent future ones from occurring. For those who want to stay ahead of the latest malware, Practical Malware Analysis will teach you the tools and techniques used by professional analysts. With this book as your guide, you'll be able to safely analyze, debug, and disassemble any malicious software that comes your way. You'll learn how to: –Set up a safe virtual environment to analyze malware –Quickly extract network signatures and host-based indicators –Use key analysis tools like IDA Pro, OllyDbg, and WinDbg –Overcome malware tricks like obfuscation, anti-disassembly, anti-debugging, and anti-virtual machine techniques –Use your newfound knowledge of Windows internals for malware analysis –Develop a methodology for unpacking malware and get practical experience with five of the most popular packers –Analyze special cases of malware with shellcode, C++, and 64-bit code Hands-on labs throughout the book challenge you to practice and synthesize your skills as you dissect real malware samples, and pages of detailed dissections offer an over-the-shoulder look at how the pros do it. You'll learn how to crack open malware to see how it really works, determine what damage it has done, thoroughly clean your network, and ensure that the malware never comes back. Malware analysis is a cat-and-mouse game with rules that are constantly changing, so make sure you have the fundamentals. Whether you're tasked with securing one network or a thousand networks, or you're making a living as a malware analyst, you'll find what you need to succeed in Practical Malware Analysis.

Know how to mitigate and handle ransomware attacks via the essential cybersecurity training in this book so you can stop attacks before they happen. Learn the types of ransomware, distribution methods, internal structure, families (variants), defense strategies, recovery methods, and legal issues related to reporting ransomware incidents to authorities and other affected parties. This book also teaches you how to develop a ransomware incident response plan to minimize ransomware damage and recover normal operations quickly. Ransomware is a category of malware that can encrypt your computer and mobile device files until you pay a ransom to unlock them. Ransomware attacks are considered the most prevalent cybersecurity threats today—the number of new ransomware variants has grown 30-fold since 2015 and they currently account for roughly 40% of all spam messages. Attacks have increased in occurrence from one every 40 seconds to one every 14 seconds. Government and private corporations are targets. Despite the security controls set by organizations to protect their digital assets, ransomware is still dominating the world of security and will continue to do so in the future. Ransomware Revealed discusses the steps to follow if a ransomware infection occurs, such as how to pay the ransom through anonymous payment methods, perform a backup and restore your affected files, and search online to find a decryption tool to unlock (decrypt) your files for free. Mitigation steps are discussed in depth for both endpoint devices and network systems. What You Will Learn Be aware of how ransomware infects your system Comprehend ransomware components in simple terms Recognize the different types of ransomware familiesIdentify the attack vectors employed by ransomware to infect computer systemsKnow how to prevent ransomware attacks from successfully comprising your system and network (i.e., mitigation strategies) Know what to do if a successful ransomware infection takes place Understand how to pay the ransom as well as the pros and cons of paying Set up a ransomware response plan to recover from such attacks Who This Book Is For Those who do not specialize in the cybersecurity field (but have adequate IT skills) and want to fully understand the anatomy of ransomware threats. Although most of the book's content will be understood by ordinary computer users, it will also prove useful for experienced IT users aiming to understand the ins and outs of ransomware threats without diving deep into the technical jargon of the internal structure of ransomware.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Third International Conference on Science of Cyber Security, SciSec 2021, held in Shanghai, China, in August 2021. The 17 full papers and 5 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 50 submissions. These papers cover the following subjects: Cyber Security, Detection, Machine Learning and much more.

This book gathers high-quality papers presented at the Third International Conference on Smart Computing and Informatics (SCI 2018–19), which was organized by the School of Computer Engineering and School of Computer Application, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar, India, on 21–22 December, 2018. It includes advanced and multi-disciplinary research on the design of smart computing and informatics. Thematically, the book broadly focuses on several innovation paradigms in system knowledge, intelligence and sustainability that can help to provide realistic solutions to various problems confronting society, the environment, and industry. The respective papers offer valuable insights into the how emerging computational and knowledge transfer approaches can be used to deliver optimal solutions in science, technology and healthcare.

This book captures the state of the art research in the area of malicious code detection, prevention and mitigation. It contains cutting-edge behavior-based techniques to analyze and detect obfuscated malware. The book analyzes current trends in malware activity online, including botnets and malicious code for profit, and it proposes effective models for detection and prevention of attacks using. Furthermore, the book introduces novel techniques for creating services that protect their own integrity and safety, plus the data they manage.