Ransomware Protection Playbook

Chapter 1Introduction to Ransomware

This chapter is a general introduction to ransomware starting with the basics and leading to a more mature discussion of all the features and components that make it such a mature and formidable foe today. You will learn that much of the ransomware industry is run more like a professional, corporate industry rather than like the traditional perception of a few bad guys or gangs hiding out in their basements drinking jacked-up caffeinated sodas surrounded by empty bags of chips. Instead, you're more likely to find CEOs, payroll departments, professional developers, and business partners. You will come away with a very good understanding of today's ransomware, what and how it does it, and the significant challenges to defeat it.

Note to the reader: This chapter is the longest of the book.

How Bad Is the Problem?

Many press and security experts seem to compete with each other to use the latest over-the-top superlatives surrounding ransomware. But for once in the computer security world, the statistics and scary reputation are well earned. We have had other very bad, long runs of damage-causing malware such as that from DOS boot viruses, disk-formatting computer viruses like Michelangelo (1992), worms that crashed email and pager systems like the Iloveyou worm (2000), rapidly spreading and database-crashing worms like SQL Slammer (2003), the USB-key spreading Conficker (2008), spam bots, and resource-sucking crypto-miners. We've been ...