New research by Recorded Future projects an increase of nation-state involvement in ransomware attacks. Researchers expect that ransomware attacks will be increasingly carried out by countries that are subject to harsh sanctions, such as North Korea, to generate revenue. Another possibility is the deployment of ransomware strains by state-backed hackers to wipe data from targeted systems.
The number of ransomware campaigns has been rising in recent years, from 635 in 2017, to 1,105 in February 2018 and on to 1,463 last month. While few of these campaigns are actually successful, an increasingly limited number of mostly targeted campaigns are generating more and more revenue for the attackers.
Read more: Increasing Involvement of Nation-states in Ransomware Attacks
