(Bloomberg) – Cyberattacks involving ransomware — inwhich criminals use malicious software to encrypt a users' data andthen extort money to unencrypt it — increased 50 percentin 2016, according to a report from Verizon Communications Inc.
And criminals increasingly shifted from going after individualconsumers to attacking vulnerable organizations andbusinesses, the report said. Government organizations were themost frequent target of these ransomware attacks, followed byhealth-care businesses and financial services, according to datafrom security company McAfee Inc., which partnered with Verizon onthe report published Thursday.
Instances of ransomware attacks have grown along with the marketfor bitcoin, the digital currency that is most commonly howcybercriminals demand ransoms be paid because of its anonymity.
Malware raids with phishing email
While overall most malware was delivered through infectedwebsites, increasingly criminals were turning to phishing— using fraudulent emails designed to get a user todownload attachments or click on links to websites that areinfected with malware — to carry out attacks. A fifth ofall malware raids began with a phishing email in 2016, while fewerthan 1 in 10 did the year before, according to the report.
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