Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

The evolution of ransomware attacks in light of recent cyber threats. How can geopolitical conflicts influence the cyber climate?

  • Published:
International Cybersecurity Law Review Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the current unpredictable cyber climate. In particular, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has heightened concerns about security incidents, and ransomware attacks have become a credible threat to businesses around the world. Ransomware attackers often target large companies or companies holding sensitive data, and companies have suffered significant losses in monetary terms and business opportunities. The main research methodology used for this study is desk research. Specifically, an extensive literature review was conducted on the latest trends in ransomware and geopolitical conflict in order to provide an overview of the current cyber climate in light of recent events. We contribute to the literature by investigating recent ransomware attacks, focusing on how the ransom is paid, how the money is transferred to the criminals, how the cryptocurrencies might be recovered, and how sustainability and cybersecurity are linked. These issues have yet to be sufficiently debated amid the latest events in Ukraine and the ransomware gangs’ involvement in geopolitical conflicts. This study provides researchers with a means of assessing vulnerabilities, revealing a path for intended research.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Explore related subjects

Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.

References

Primary Literature

  1. Ahmed U, Lin JCW, Srivastava G (2022) Mitigating adversarial evasion attacks of ransomware using ensemble learning. Comput Electr Eng 100:107903

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Al-Hamar Y, Kolivand H, Tajdini M, Saba T, Ramachandran V (2021) Enterprise credential spear-phishing attack detection. Comput Electr Eng 94:107363

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Al-Hasnawi AHM (2022) Cyberspace and its impact on the growing geopolitical power of russia during the era of Vladimir Putin: a geopolitical vision. World Bull Soc Sci 10:72–82

    Google Scholar 

  4. Alqahtani A, Sheldon FT (2022) A survey of crypto Ransomware attack detection methodologies: an evolving outlook. Sensors 22(5):1837

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Alwashali AAMA, Rahman ANA, Ismail N (2021) A survey of Ransomware as a service (RaaS) and methods to mitigate the attack. 14th International Conference on Developments in eSystems Engineering (DeSE), 2021, pp 92–96

    Google Scholar 

  6. Aman MN, Javaid U, Sikdar B (2021) IoT-proctor: a secure and lightweight device patching framework for mitigating malware spread in IoT networks. IEEE Syst J. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2021.3070404

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Amos Z (2023) What are the legal implications of a ransomware attack? https://incyber.org/en/what-are-legal-implications-ransomware-attack/. Accessed 16 June 2023

  8. Baker K (2022) Ransomware as a service (RaaS) explained. https://www.crowdstrike.com/cybersecurity-101/ransomware/ransomware-as-a-service-raas/. Accessed 23 June 2022

  9. Balta W, S, Chawla M, Dencik J, Lin S (2022) Sustenability as a transformation catalyst. https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/report/sustainability-transformation. Accessed 23 Aug 2022

  10. Beaman C, Barkworth A, Akande TD, Hakak S, Khan MK (2021) Ransomware: recent advances, analysis, challenges and future research directions. Comput Secur 111:102490

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Bertia A, Xavier SB, Kathrine GJW, Palmer GM (2022) A study about detecting Ransomware by using different algorithms. International Conference on Applied Artificial Intelligence and Computing (ICAAIC), 2022, pp 1293–1300

    Google Scholar 

  12. Bitton R, Shabtai A (2019) A machine learning-based intrusion detection system for securing remote desktop connections to electronic flight bag servers. IEEE Trans Dependable and Secure Comput 18(3):1164–1181

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Brewer R (2016) Ransomware attacks: detection, prevention and cure. Netw Secur 2016(9):5–9

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Bund J, Höfer L (2022) “Sincere about ulterior motives”: the invasion of Ukraine and russia’s shapeshifting relationship with Ransomware groups. https://isnblog.ethz.ch/cyber/sincere-about-ulterior-motives-the-invasion-of-ukraine-and-russias-shapeshifting-relationship-with-ransomware-groups. Accessed 27 June 2022

  15. Bunge J (2022) JBS paid $11 million to resolve Ransomware attack. https://www.wsj.com/articles/jbs-paid-11-million-to-resolve-ransomware-attack-11623280781. Accessed 17 Aug 2022

  16. Chainalysis (2022) As Ransomware payments continue to grow, so too does Ransomware’s role in geopolitical conflict. https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-crypto-crime-report-preview-ransomware/. Accessed 26 June 2022

  17. Chawla A (2022) Anonymous declares cyber war against Russia amid Ukraine war, takes down government website. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/anonymous-declares-cyber-war-against-russia-amid-ukraine-war-takes-down-government-websites/articleshow/89825529.cms. Accessed 27 June 2022

  18. Chen J (2020) COVID-19: Cloud Threat Landscape. https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/covid-19-cloud-threat-landscape/ Accessed 15 June 2023.

  19. Chiappetta A (2019) The cybersecurity impacts on geopolitics. FormaMente 14(1):61–74

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  20. Chin K (2022) How to prevent Ransomware attacks: top 10 best practices in 2022. https://www.upguard.com/blog/best-practices-to-prevent-ransomware-attacks. Accessed 15 Aug 2022

  21. Coufalíková A, Klaban I, Šlajs T (2021) Complex strategy against supply chain attacks. International Conference on Military Technologies (ICMT), 2021, pp 1–5

    Google Scholar 

  22. Cynet (2023) NIST incident response plan: building your own IR process based on NIST framework. https://www.cynet.com/incident-response/nist-incident-response/. Accessed 22 June 2023

  23. D’Adamo I, González-Sánchez R, Medina-Salgado MS, Settembre-Blundo D (2021) Methodological perspective for assessing European consumers’ awareness of cybersecurity and sustainability in e‑commerce. Sustainability 13(20):11343

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Danchev D (2008) Coordinated Russia vs Georgia cyber-attack in progress. https://www.zdnet.com/article/coordinated-russia-vs-georgia-cyber-attack-in-progress/. Accessed 22 June 2022

  25. Dhawan S, Narwal B (2019) Unfolding the mystery of ransomware. International conference on innovative computing and communications. Springer, Singapore, pp 25–32

    Google Scholar 

  26. Din A (2021) Double extortion Ransomware: the new normal. https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/double-extortion-ransomware/. Accessed 22 June 2022

  27. Duan R, Alrawi O, Kasturi RP, Elder R, Saltaformaggio B, Lee W (2020) Towards measuring supply chain attacks on package managers for interpreted languages (arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.01139)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Duncan S, Carneiro R, Braley J, Hersh M, Ramsey F, Murch R (2022) Cybersecurity: beyond Ransomware: securing the digital food chain. Food Aust 74(1):36–40

    Google Scholar 

  29. Dunn J (2022) Has the Ukraine conflict disrupted Ransomware attacks? https://ransomware.org/blog/has-the-ukraine-conflict-disrupted-ransomware-attacks/. Accessed 9 Nov 2022

  30. Faghihi F, Zulkernine M (2021) RansomCare: data-centric detection and mitigation against smartphone crypto-ransomware. Comput Networks 191:108011

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Fein D (2021) 9 stages of ransomware: how AI responds at every stage. https://darktrace.com/blog/9-stages-of-ransomware-how-ai-responds-at-every-stage. Accessed 16 Aug 2022

  32. Freed AM (2021) A brief history of Ransomware evolution. https://www.cybereason.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-ransomware-evolution. Accessed 21 July 2022

  33. Gómez-Hernández JA, Sánchez-Fernández R, García-Teodoro P (2022) Inhibiting crypto-ransomware on windows platforms through a honeyfile-based approach with R‑Locker. IET Inf Secur 16(1):64–74

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Gooding M (2022) Cybersecurity is an ESG concern for investors but businesses are holding back on transparency. https://techmonitor.ai/esg-and-it/esg-and-cybersecurity-investors. Accessed 19 Aug 2022

  35. Gordon M (2015) Lessons from the front: a case study of Russian Cyber warfare. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/AD1040762. Accessed 24 June 2022

  36. Greig J (2022) Anonymous hacktivists, ransomware groups get involved in Ukraine-Russia conflict. https://www.zdnet.com/article/anonymous-hacktivists-ransomware-groups-get-involved-in-ukraine-russia-conflict/. Accessed 27 June 2022

  37. De Groot J (2022) A history of Ransomware attacks: the biggest and worst Ransomware attacks of all time. https://digitalguardian.com/blog/history-ransomware-attacks-biggest-and-worst-ransomware-attacks-all-time. Accessed 21 July 2022

  38. Harrington D (2022) Ransomware-as-a-service explained: what is RaaS? https://www.varonis.com/blog/ransomware-as-a-service. Accessed 23 June 2022

  39. Hijji M, Alam G (2021) A multivocal literature review on growing social engineering based cyber-attacks/threats during the COVID-19 pandemic: challenges and prospective solutions. IEEE Access 9:7152–7169

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Hodge N (2009) Russian ‘Cyber militia’ takes Kyrgyzstan offline? https://www.wired.com/2009/01/cyber-militia-t/. Accessed 26 June 2022

  41. Hull G, John H, Arief B (2019) Ransomware deployment methods and analysis: views from a predictive model and human responses. Crime Sci 8(1):1–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. IBM (2022) What is incident response? https://www.ibm.com/topics/incident-response. Accessed 9 Feb 2023

  43. Ikeda S (2022) As Ukraine war rages, Conti Ransomware gang throws support behind Russian government. https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/as-ukraine-war-rages-conti-ransomware-gang-throws-support-behind-russian-government/. Accessed 27 June 2022

  44. Johansen A (2021) What is ransomware and how to help prevent ransomware attacks. https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-malware-ransomware-5-dos-and-donts.html. Accessed 11 Aug 2022

  45. Kara I, Aydos M (2022) The rise of ransomware: forensic analysis for windows based ransomware attacks. Expert Syst Appl 190:116198

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Karapapas C, Pittaras I, Fotiou N, Polyzos GC (2020) Ransomware as a service using smart contracts and IPFS (arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.0442)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  47. Karlidag S, Bulut S (2020) Cyber-attacks from the political economy perspective and Turkey. Handbook of research on the political economy of communications and media. IGI Global, pp 305–321

    Google Scholar 

  48. Kelley D, Chanda D (2022) How to put cybersecurity sustainability into practice. https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/tip/How-to-put-cybersecurity-sustainability-into-practice. Accessed 17 Aug 2022

  49. Kerns Q, Payne B, Abegaz T (2021) Double-extortion Ransomware: a technical analysis of maze Ransomware. Proceedings of the future technologies conference. Springer, Cham, pp 82–94

    Google Scholar 

  50. Keshavarzi M, Ghaffary HR (2020) I2CE3: a dedicated and separated attack chain for ransomware offenses as the most infamous cyber extortion. Comput Sci Rev 36:100233

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Khraisat A, Gondal I, Vamplew P, Kamruzzaman J (2019) Survey of intrusion detection systems: techniques, datasets and challenges. Cybersecur 2(1):1–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Kirvan P, Chapple M (2023) How to build an incident response plan, with examples, template. https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/feature/5-critical-steps-to-creating-an-effective-incident-response-plan. Accessed 22 June 2023

  53. Kochovski A (2022) Ransomware statistics, trends and facts for 2022 and beyond. https://www.cloudwards.net/ransomware-statistics/#Sources. Accessed 24 June 2022

  54. Kost E (2022) What is Ransomware as a service (RaaS)? The dangerous threat to world security. https://www.upguard.com/blog/what-is-ransomware-as-a-service. Accessed 23 June 2022

  55. Kovar R (2022) Ransomware through the supply chain: are organizations prepared for the new normal? https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/opinions/ransomware-through-the-supply-chain/. Accessed 22 June 2022

  56. Kumar S (2020) An emerging threat fileless malware: a survey and research challenges. Cybersecur 3(1):1–12

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Kumar PR, Ramlie HREBH (2021) Anatomy of Ransomware: attack stages, patterns and handling techniques. International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Information System. Springer, Cham, pp 205–214

    Google Scholar 

  58. Lakhani A (2021) Analyzing the history of Ransomware across industries. https://www.fortinet.com/blog/industry-trends/analyzing-the-history-of-ransomware-across-industries. Accessed 22 July 2022

  59. Leddy B (2021) Double extortion ransomware. https://www.darktrace.com/en/blog/double-extortion-ransomware/. Accessed 22 June 2022

  60. Lee SJ, Shim HY, Lee YR, Park TR, Park SH, Lee IG (2022) Study on systematic ransomware detection techniques. 24th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology (ICACT), 2022, pp 297–301

    Google Scholar 

  61. van der Linden G (2021) Malware: bad for business and the environment. https://www.capgemini.com/insights/expert-perspectives/malware-bad-for-business-and-the-environment/. Accessed 17 Aug 2022

  62. Maalem Lahcen RA, Caulkins B, Mohapatra R, Kumar M (2020) Review and insight on the behavioral aspects of cybersecurity. Cybersecur 3(1):1–18

    Article  Google Scholar 

  63. Margarov G, Mitrofanova E (2020) Management of Ransomware detection and prevention in multilevel environmental monitoring information system. Functional nanostructures and sensors for CBRN defence and environmental safety and security. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 125–131

    Google Scholar 

  64. Meland PH, Bayoumy YFF, Sindre G (2020) The Ransomware-as-a-service economy within the darknet. Comput Secur 92:101762

    Article  Google Scholar 

  65. Mohurle S, Patil M (2017) A brief study of wannacry threat: Ransomware attack 2017. Int J Adv Res Comput Sci 8(5):1938–1940

    Google Scholar 

  66. Mondal S, Ghosh S, Kumar A, Islam SH, Chatterjee R (2022) Spear phishing detection: an ensemble learning approach. Data analytics, computational statistics, and operations research for engineers. CRC Press, pp 203–234

    Google Scholar 

  67. Monge MAS, Vidal JM, Villalba LJG (2018) A novel self-organizing network solution towards crypto-ransomware mitigation. Proceedings of the 13th international conference on availability, reliability and security, pp 1–10

    Google Scholar 

  68. Ohm M, Plate H, Sykosch A, Meier M (2020) Backstabber’s knife collection: a review of open source software supply chain attacks. International Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment. Springer, Cham, pp 23–43

    Google Scholar 

  69. Owen J (2022) Geopolitical tensions drive ransomware risks for business. https://www.securityinfowatch.com/security-executives/article/21265451/geopolitical-tensions-drive-ransomware-risks-for-business. Accessed 25 June 2022

  70. Owen DR, Ritz K, Moses A (2023) To pay or not to pay? Key factors to consider when Ransomware strikes. https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2023/05/02/to-pay-or-not-to-pay-key-factors-to-consider-when-ransomware-strikes/?slreturn=20230515091832. Accessed 16 June 2023

  71. Paquette D (2021) The 7 stages of a Ransomware attack. https://www.zerto.com/blog/ransomware-recovery/the-7-stages-of-a-ransomware-attack/. Accessed 10 Aug 2022

  72. Payne B, Mienie E (2021) Multiple-extortion Ransomware: the case for active cyber threat intelligence. 20th European Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security, 2021, p 331

    Google Scholar 

  73. Pechi D (2019) Predicting cyber-attacks using neural language models of sociopolitical events. https://danpechi.github.io/Dan%20Pechi%20Thesis.pdf. Accessed 25 June 2022

  74. Phipps G (2022) Know the phases of a Ransomware attack. https://www.cybergrx.com/resources/research-and-insights/blog/know-the-phases-of-a-ransomware-attack. Accessed 17 Aug 2022

  75. Pitchkites M (2021) Ransomware protection tips: tools & tips to protect your business in 2022. https://www.cloudwards.net/ransomware-protection/. Accessed 24 June 2022

  76. Przetacznik J, Tarpova S (2022) Russia’s war on Ukraine: timeline of cyber-attacks. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2022/733549/EPRS_BRI(2022)733549_EN.pdf. Accessed 7 Nov 2022

  77. Radcliff D (2022) How the Russia-Ukraine war makes ransomware payments harder. https://www.csoonline.com/article/3663032/how-the-russia-ukraine-war-makes-ransomware-payments-harder.html. Accessed 7 Nov 2022

  78. Reed J (2022) Recovering ransom payments: is this the end of Ransomware? https://securityintelligence.com/articles/recovering-ransomware-payment/. Accessed 14 Aug 2022

  79. Sajjan RS, Ghorpade VR (2017) Ransomware attacks: radical menace for cloud computing. International Conference on Wireless Communications, Signal Processing and Networking (WiSPNET), 2017, pp 1640–1646

    Google Scholar 

  80. Sarnek A, Dolan C (2022) Cybersecurity is an environmental, social and governance issue. Here’s why. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/three-reasons-why-cybersecurity-is-a-critical-component-of-esg/. Accessed 19 Aug 2022

  81. Sharton B (2021) Ransomware attacks are spiking. Is your company prepared? https://hbr.org/2021/05/ransomware-attacks-are-spiking-is-your-company-prepared. Accessed 24 June 2021

  82. Shi F (2021) Threat spotlight: Ransomware trends. https://blog.barracuda.com/2021/08/12/threat-spotlight-ransomware-trends/. Accessed 20 June 2022

  83. Simoiu C, Zand A, Thomas K, Bursztein E (2020) Who is targeted by email-based phishing and malware? measuring factors that differentiate risk. Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference, pp 567–576

    Google Scholar 

  84. SonicWall (2022) 2022 SonicWall cyber threat report. https://www.sonicwall.com/2022-cyber-threat-report/?elqCampaignId=13998&sfc=7013h000000MiQZAA0&gclid=CjwKCAiAgbiQBhAHEiwAuQ6BkmbfNdHZWbIdJBPGBn4ut4T3yR5wDxM6JrGQbSMPEUk4O5ClyAmcVxoC7MsQAvD_BwE. Accessed 21 June 2022

  85. Sophos (2021) The state of Ransomware 2021. https://assets.sophos.com/X24WTUEQ/at/k4qjqs73jk9256hffhqsmf/sophos-state-of-ransomware-2021-wp.pdf?cmp=120469. Accessed 20 June 2022

  86. Srinivasan CR (2017) Hobby hackers to billion-dollar industry: the evolution of ransomware. Comput Fraud Secur 2017(11):7–9

    Article  Google Scholar 

  87. Swinhoe D (2020) How to buy Bitcoin for ransomware payment. https://www.csoonline.com/article/3588152/how-to-buy-bitcoin-for-ransomware-payment-if-you-must.html. Accessed 16 Aug 2020

  88. Tamkin E (2020) 10 years after the landmark attack on Estonia, is the world better prepared for cyberthreats?, foreign policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/27/10-years-after-the-landmark-attack-on-estonia-is-the-world-better-prepared-for-cyber-threats/. Accessed 20 June 2022

  89. Tan MKS, Goode S, Richardson A (2021) Understanding negotiated anti-malware interruption effects on user decision quality in endpoint security. Behav Inf Technol 40(9):903–932

    Article  Google Scholar 

  90. Taylor MA, Larson EC, Thornton MA (2021) Rapid Ransomware detection through side channel exploitation. IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience (CSR), 2021, pp 47–54

    Google Scholar 

  91. Teichmann F, Boticiu S (2023) The importance of cybersecurity incident response plans for law firms. https://jusletter.weblaw.ch/juslissues/2023/1149/the-importance-of-cy_3c77b063f1.html__ONCE&login=false. Accessed 15 June 2023

  92. Teichmann F, Boticiu S, Sergi BS (2022) Ransomware—a growing threat for law firms. https://jusletter.weblaw.ch/juslissues/2022/1126/ransomware---a-growi_5933ba139a.html__ONCE&login=false. Accessed 16 June 2023

  93. Thakur S, Chaudhari S, Joshi B (2022) Ransomware: threats, identification and prevention, pp 361–387

    Google Scholar 

  94. Thomas J (2018) Individual cyber security: empowering employees to resist spear phishing to prevent identity theft and ransomware attacks. J Bus Manag 12(3):1–23

    Google Scholar 

  95. Tikk E, Kaska K, Vihul L (2010) International cyber incidents: legal considerations. https://ccdcoe.org/library/publications/international-cyber-incidents-legal-considerations/ Accessed 22 June 2023

  96. Traynor I (2007) Russia accused of unleashing cyberwar to disable Estonia. Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/may/17/topstories3.russia Accessed 15 June 2023

  97. Tunggal A (2023) What is an incident response plan? https://www.upguard.com/blog/incident-response-plan. Accessed 22 June 2023

  98. Urooj U, Maarof MAB, Al-rimy BAS (2021) A proposed adaptive pre-encryption crypto-ransomware early detection model. 3rd International Cyber Resilience Conference (CRC), 2021, pp 1–6

    Google Scholar 

  99. Vail E (2022) Russia or Ukraine: hacking groups take sides. https://therecord.media/russia-or-ukraine-hacking-groups-take-sides/. Accessed 27 June 2022

  100. Venteicher B (2022) Cybersecurity for a more sustainable future. https://securityintelligence.com/posts/cybersecurity-sustainable-future/. Accessed 19 Aug 2022

  101. Verma RM, Zeng V, Faridi H (2019) Data quality for security challenges: case studies of phishing, malware and intrusion detection datasets. Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, pp 2605–2607

    Google Scholar 

  102. Wray R, Massey L, Medina J, Bolton A (2020) Increasing engagement in a cyber-awareness training game. International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Springer, Cham, pp 147–158

    Google Scholar 

  103. Xiao M (2022) Ransomware shifts toward destructive attacks as ‘geopolitical tensions’ take hold. https://www.scmagazine.com/analysis/ransomware/dragos-tracks-shift-in-ransomware-toward-destructive-attacks-as-geopolitical-tensions-take-hold. Accessed 7 Nov 2022

  104. Young AL, Yung M (2017) Cryptovirology: the birth, neglect, and explosion of ransomware. Commun ACM 60(7):24–26

    Article  Google Scholar 

  105. Yunus YKBM, Ngah SB (2021) Ransomware: stages, detection and evasion. International Conference on Software Engineering & Computer Systems and 4th International Conference on Computational Science and Information Management (ICSECS-ICOCSIM), 2021, pp 227–231

    Google Scholar 

Further Reading

  1. Bello I, Chiroma H, Abdullahi UA, Gital AYU, Jauro F, Khan A, Abdulhamid SIM (2021) Detecting ransomware attacks using intelligent algorithms: recent development and next direction from deep learning and big data perspectives. J Ambient Intell Human Comput 12(9):8699–8717

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Gallagher R, Bloomberg (2021) https://fortune.com/2021/11/08/police-arrest-five-people-tied-to-ransomware-group-revil/. Accessed 24 June 2022

  3. Herrera Silva JA, Barona López LI, Valdivieso Caraguay ÁL, Hernández-Álvarez M (2019) A survey on situational awareness of ransomware attacks—detection and prevention parameters. Remote Sens 11(10):1168

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Huang DY, Aliapoulios MM, Li VG, Invernizzi L, Bursztein E, McRoberts K, McCoy D et al (2018) Tracking ransomware end-to-end. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), 2018, pp 618–631

    Google Scholar 

  5. Lavorgna A, Antonopoulos GA (2022) Criminal markets and networks in cyberspace. Trends Organ Crime. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-022-09450-5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. McDermott D (2022) What global geopolitics means for your cybersecurity? https://www.getcyberresilient.com/threat-insights/what-global-geopolitics-means-your-cybersecurity. Accessed 15 June 2022

  7. Musotto R, Wall DS (2020) More Amazon than Mafia: analysing a DDoS stresser service as organised cybercrime. Trends Organ Crime. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-020-09397-5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Naylor B, Johnson C (2021) U.S. indicts 2 men behind major ransomware attacks. https://www.npr.org/2021/11/08/1053599349/u-s-indicts-2-men-behind-ransomware-attacks-over-the-summer. Accessed 24 June 2022

  9. New York Times (2021) F.B.I director compares danger of Ransomware to 9/11 terror threat. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/us/politics/ransomware-cyberattacks-sept-11-fbi.html. Accessed 21 June 2022

  10. O’Kane P, Sezer S, Carlin D (2018) Evolution of ransomware. IET Networks 7(5):321–327

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Partida D (2022) Recent Ransomware attacks & what we learned. https://www.cioinsight.com/security/recent-ransomware-attacks/. Accessed 21 June 2022

  12. Raju AD, Abualhaol IY, Giagone RS, Zhou Y, Huang S (2021) A survey on cross-architectural iot malware threat hunting. IEEE Access 9:91686–91709

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Ryan P, Fokker J, Healy S, Amann A (2022) Dynamics of targeted ransomware negotiation. IEEE Access 10:32836–32844

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Sganga N (2021) JBS paid $11 million ransom after cyberattack. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jbs-ransom-11-million/. Accessed 21 June 2022

  15. Tandon A, Nayyar A (2019) A comprehensive survey on ransomware attack: a growing havoc cyberthreat. Data Manag Anal Innov. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1274-8_31

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Teichmann International (Schweiz) AG, Dufourstr. 124, 9000, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Fabian Teichmann & Sonia R. Boticiu

  2. Center for International Development, Harvard University, 02138, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Bruno S. Sergi

Authors
  1. Fabian Teichmann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Sonia R. Boticiu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Bruno S. Sergi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed to the conception and design of the study.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sonia R. Boticiu.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

F. Teichmann, S.R. Boticiu, and B.S. Sergi declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Data Availability Statement

The data used to support the findings of this study are included in the article.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Teichmann, F., Boticiu, S.R. & Sergi, B.S. The evolution of ransomware attacks in light of recent cyber threats. How can geopolitical conflicts influence the cyber climate?. Int. Cybersecur. Law Rev. 4, 259–280 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1365/s43439-023-00095-w

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1365/s43439-023-00095-w

Keywords

Search

Navigation