4 ms·

companies have backups, paying hackers is ultimately just for avoiding leaks of data. Ransomware only works against individuals

• btilly 3y ago
  Sorry, but that's dead wrong. Ransomware only works against companies, because individuals can't pay you. Most individuals can't figure out bitcoin, and the overhead of the transaction is too much. But for $10 million, a company can figure out bitcoin and the transaction overhead is minimal. As for the backups, the groups running ransomware are very aware of the importance of backups. Therefore they have developed best practices targeting the backup systems in a variety of ways. If the backups are online, delete them. If the backups are offline, compromise the backup server so it stops taking backups, leave that for a while, then do your attack. (You'd be shocked at how many companies don't test backups regularly...) If whole computers are backed up, insert a malware timebomb - as soon as the computer realizes the date, it destroys itself. When it is restored from backup, the backup also destroys itself. Most companies pay too little attention to backups. And therefore highly motivated attackers regularly succeed in attacking them.