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The victims' only mistake was the way they underfunded their IT security. It's not a small mistake though, and the financial losses of the victim itself can in

• meowface 5y ago
  It's more than that, though. Many of the modern ransomware gangs are filled with talented, dedicated attackers who specifically target certain companies. You could invest a ton into security, have a competent security team, follow best practices, set up lots of security appliances and software, have lots of analysts monitoring and responding to alerts and actively hunting for threats and writing custom SIEM rules etc., and there could still be one small mistake that lets a sophisticated attacker in. As the adage goes, the defenders have to win every time and the attackers only have to win once. A group of sufficiently motivated, dedicated, resourceful, and talented attackers who face zero risk of any sort of repercussions will very likely get in if they put enough time and effort into it. This isn't just old-school ransomware that merely tries to infect as many computers as possible in general and just happens to land on a corporate machine and automatically spreads from there. These are trained, experienced red teams manually targeting companies and everyone who works at them. In many cases the victims do indeed have poor security, but a company doesn't necessarily need to have poor security to fall victim to ransomware.