Just the first quarter of 2020 has witnessed many high profile attacks.

Biggest ransomware attacks in 2020 so far

The number and ransom amount of ransomware attacks have both shown a rise in 2020. Various businesses and other organizations have become victims of ransomware attacks.

DoppelPaymer Ransomware hits Los Angeles

DoppelPaymer ransomware operators have attacked a Los Angeles county. Torrance, a city located in the South Bay region of LA with nearly 150,000 population, is the impacted county. Attackers claim to have encrypted 150 servers and 500 workstations on Sunday, March 1, 2020. According to reports, attackers have stolen over 200GB of files. They have demanded a ransom of 100 bitcoin, i.e., approximately $689,147, from the city.

Russian car owners details on the sale

Ransomware attackers have attacked a Russian car owners’ database and published it on a darknet forum. The database reportedly had 129 million records, which attackers have made available for purchase. Ransomware attackers are selling a complete view of the database version for 0.3 bitcoin, i.e., $2,850. They are also offering to purchase information for exclusive use at 1.5 bitcoin, i.e., approximately $14,250.

RYUK ransomware attack on EMCOR

On February 15, 2020, EMCOR - a Fortune 500 company, disclosed that it has been under RYUK ransomware attack. EMCOR kept details of the attack as a secret from the public for almost three weeks. The company didn’t mention whether they paid any ransom for the data, or they are reaccessing data from backups.

Despite all efforts for cybersecurity, numbers of ransomware attacks are increasing. This has raised the need to going beyond the traditional network firewall to enhance the overall security. These well-programmed threats needs and newer and smarter security solution so that businesses can improve their security. With a context-based security solution like Gajshield that uses its contextual intelligence engine to monitor network transactions and identifies outliers and malicious actor and use an intelligent sandboxing technique that can emulate various human action triggers to capture trigger-based malware to protect business and their critical data from these evolving threats including ransomware attacks.