FBI Investigating More than 100 Ransomware Variants

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is at the moment investigating additional than 100 different variants of ransomware, lots of of which have been made use of in several ransomware campaigns.

Data on the Bureau’s initiatives to tackle the malware danger was among the remarks delivered to the United States House Committee on the Judiciary in Washington on Tuesday by Bryan Vorndran, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division. 

“There is not a day that goes by with out many FBI field places of work responding to ransomware attacks,” claimed Vorndran, “The ransomware menace is not new, and it has been one of the FBI’s top rated cybercriminal investigative priorities for some time, but we have viewed ransomware attack reporting maximize significantly in the previous two decades, and the effect of these attacks has developed to dangerous proportions, threatening our economic and nationwide security.”

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Describing the rise in ransomware use, Vorndran mentioned that from 2019 to 2021, the number of ransomware complaints claimed to the FBI’s Internet Criminal offense Grievance Heart (IC3) improved by 82%, with a 449% increase in ransom payments over the exact same interval.

“‘Ransomware-as-a-service’ (when a developer sells or leases ransomware resources to legal consumers) has reduced the barrier to entry and technological savviness necessary to carry out and gain from these compromises and elevated the variety of criminals conducting ransomware strategies,” famous Vorndran.

He additional that although ransomware actors and tactics have progressed, the motive powering the malware’s use was nonetheless maximizing profit by paralyzing victims’ functions. 

“Cyber-criminals realize profit can be maximized by focusing on businesses in which downtime simply cannot be tolerated – particularly, infrastructure critical to public basic safety,” reported Vorndran, “In 2021 by yourself, the FBI, CISA, and NSA observed incidents involving ransomware versus 14 of the 16 US critical infrastructure sectors.”

The FBI has much more than 800 cyber-qualified brokers spread across 56 discipline offices and extra than 350 sub-offices. Vorndran explained the Bureau’s attain, one of a kind applications and sources were being unmatched by any other group.

He reported: “We can place a cyber-educated FBI agent on nearly any doorstep in this region in just a person hour, and we can execute the exact in a lot more than 70 international locations in a single working day by means of our network of authorized attachés and cyber assistant lawful attachés.”