CIO OPINION
Nearly two-thirds of all ransomware attacks in 2020 came from RaaSbased platforms which are tailor-made for amateurs to carry out devastating attacks .
Wissam Saadeddine , Senior Manager –
MENA , Infoblox
The madness of ransomware-as-a-Service ’
What is RaaS and what does that mean ? Ransomware-as-a-Service ( RaaS ) means that you can simply purchase a service online , on the dark web and you can then take whoever you want hostage at will . So , if you want to get rich quickly , all you need is a connection to the dark web , a credit card or other way to pay and reprehensible morals . Wissam Saadeddine , Senior Manager – MENA , Infoblox , tells us here that ransomware is bad , but it is also made very easy for the perpetrators .
Ransomware has taken on absurd forms recently . At the beginning of this year , much of the east coast in the United States faced gas shortages because Colonial Pipeline was shut down . In July , hundreds of managed service providers had REvil ransomware dropped on their systems through Kaseya desktop management software . In Ireland , the HSE ( the Health Service Executive , responsible for health care in the country ) was in a digital hostage situation . And those are just a few of the most striking examples .
What ’ s so striking about these attacks is that they all seem to be the work of amateurs and not of professional hacking groups .
The Colonial Pipeline hackers said of the chaos they caused at American gas pumps : “ Our goal is to make money , not to create problems for society .” The HSE hackers eventually gave their decryption code away for free , appearing to be a bit shocked by the impacts of their attack . And in July , the REvil group suddenly went offline , shortly before an unknown person handed the Kaseya victims the decryption key .
In fact , researchers at cybersecurity company Group-IB have reported that nearly two-thirds of all ransomware attacks in 2020 came from RaaS-based platforms which are tailor-made for amateurs to carry out devastating attacks .
44 INTELLIGENTCIO MIDDLE EAST www . intelligentcio . com