If you, like many other users (and certainly many IT service providers), are sick and tired of cryptoware attacks, then there’s good news on the horizon! Pretty soon, cryptoware will be the least of your concerns!
Cryptoware, while devasting in its brutal efficiency, can be very easily mitigated by performing regular backups of your data, usually in what is called a “System Image” backup. This allows for you to completely wipe your computer and restore it with all of data up to the point of the backup creation. By performing that simple step, you can tell the ransomware crypto-cyber-criminals to $–! off and &–# their $—-! )——@ *—) in their %–!
The unfortunate reality is that cyber criminals know this, too. They are aware of how easy it is to turn what would have been a devastating attack into an annoying inconvenience, and much like that song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” – they’re in a bind, because they’re way behind, and they’re willing to make a deal.The “deal” that they make is to leverage all of the computers they’ve compromised in their botnets (a group of compromised computers that can be used to siphon computing resources from, en masse), centralize it, and to use that as a means of carrying out targeted attacks on servers in what is known as a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. The technically inclined folks reading this already know what that means, so let me explain it in English for those who don’t geek out over botnets and server requests.
Think of it as a small country (let’s say, Liechtenstein) with a small missile arsenal. They are small, their arsenal is small, and by themselves can’t really inflict much damage on a larger more sophisticated target. Now consider how powerful Liechtenstein would be if it had access and control of 20 other small countries’ missiles and weapons. That would make Liechtenstein a VERY capable and formidable threat. That’s what botnets are: a force multiplier.
Now you may think, “Botnets, those are a thing of deep dark web corners, where sophisticated and REALLY seasoned cyber criminals hang out” – a thing for the big leagues, right? Does $20 a month sound big league? I ask because that’s what the starting rate is for a more than sufficient amount of time, on a particular botnet (which I won’t name) that comes with customer support. You don’t have to be Guccifer to know how to carry out a highly effective DDoS attack, bringing a server(s) down. Your 15-year-old kid could be doing this with his allowance as we speak, p0wning his school district because, well, why not?
Now, you may ask, “How does a person protect against this?” Well, if you’re just an average Joe, you’re not a direct target (unless you piss off some kids on Call of Duty). This style of attack is geared towards companies that rely on servers to be fully functional with high uptime. Think of hospitals, banks, stores; businesses for whom server downtime costs tens of thousands of dollars or more, who would rather pay a $10,000 ransom just to get their services back up and running, than spend $90,000 trying to mitigate or respond to it.
There are more and more anti-DDoS services popping up as a result, as historical trends indicate a leap in DDoS style attacks. These companies serve to provide a reasonable layer of protection and act somewhat like a gatekeeper, so when a ton of requests come in, they begin blocking those requests. This service certainly comes as a cost, but not nearly as steep a cost as scaling servers to handle the sheer volume of requests a DDoS attack creates, OR the cost of server/network downtime.
The barrier for entry into effective cybercrime is getting lower and lower; keep an eye on your teenagers, so when they pull up in a new BMW they bought with their “internet money,” you know where it really came from.