Cyber extortion sees huge rise – and small businesses are four times more likely to be hit


Cyber extortion remains the most prominent threat facing businesses of all sizes across all industries, a new report from Orange Cyberdefense has found.

The 2024 Cy-Explorer report worryingly uncovered that the number of victims of cyber extortion scams has grown by 77% year on year. In Q1 of 2024 alone, there were 1,046 organizations that were the victims of double-extortion. The actual figure for victims of ransomware attacks is likely to be much higher – known as the “dark number” – due to the stats on cyber extortion being gathered from observable data on dark web leak sites.

Read more…
Source: MSN News


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Phishing, ransomware are top cyberattacks on financial services firms

    July 1, 2019

    Phishing and ransomware attacks are the most reported types of cyberattacks on financial services firms, but in most cases the causes of outages were far more mundane. Financial services firms reported 819 cyber incidents to their watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), last year, a huge rise on the 69 incidents reported the year before. Retail banks were responsible ...

  • Island hopping: The latest security threat you should be aware of

    July 1, 2019

    While island hopping sounds like a great way to spend a holiday in Thailand or Greece, the term also refers to an advanced cyber attack technique. Though it’s not a new phenomenon, this type of attack increased in prevalence in 2018 and will likely become more and more common. The name ‘island hopping’ comes from a WWII ...

  • New Dridex Variant Slips By Anti-Virus Detection

    June 28, 2019

    A never-before-seen Dridex variant has been spotted in phishing emails using anti-virus detection evasion tactics. Researchers have spotted a variant of the Dridex banking trojan with new obfuscation capabilities that help it skirt anti-virus detection. While Dridex has been around since 2011, researchers told Threatpost Friday that they recently spotted phishing emails distributing a never-before-seen variant of the ...

  • Riltok mobile Trojan: A banker with global reach

    June 25, 2019

    Riltok is one of numerous families of mobile banking Trojans with standard (for such malware) functions and distribution methods. Originally intended to target the Russian audience, the banker was later adapted, with minimal modifications, for the European “market.” The bulk of its victims (more than 90%) reside in Russia, with France in second place (4%). ...

  • Anonymous hacker exposed after dropping USB drive while throwing Molotov cocktail

    June 24, 2019

    In a bizarre investigation, Belgium police have identified a member of the Anonymous Belgium hacker collective while investigating an arson case at a local bank. The perpetrator, a 35-year-old man from the Belgian city of Roeselare, was initially arrested after throwing a Molotov cocktail at the Crelan Bank office in Rumbeke, a suburb of Roeselare, back ...

  • Plurox: Modular backdoor

    June 18, 2019

    In February this year, a curious backdoor passed across our virtual desk. The analysis showed the malware to have a few quite unpleasant features. It can spread itself over a local network via an exploit, provide access to the attacked network, and install miners and other malicious software on victim computers. What’s more, the backdoor ...