Google research warns of ransomware lurking around

Google researchers have claimed that cyber criminals have made roughly $25 million in ransom in the last two years

Google has warned that the Ransomware is going to be lurking around, the search engine giant while conducting research made several virtual victims in order to track back the payment ecosystem of the malware.

According to the report on BBC, most revenues generated by attacks were in 2016 bringing the payments of $7 million, cyber criminals found it a lucrative business which was revealed in talks in Black Hat world.

Verge reported that the study presented today by researchers at Google, was actually someone else’s work, Google only acknowledged and disseminated the research conducted in Chainalysis, UC San Diego, and the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

The study has tracked 32 different families of ransomware, among them, two families Locky and Cerber fetched the most money.

According to the research, several methods were used to figure out the cash flow to ransom creators, by drawing upon the reports from people who actually paid the ransom, and by estimating it on virtual machines.

The research also found more variants of ransomware when the network traffic was monitored on virtual machines.

Payment analysis of Bitcoin suggests two major strains made the most in the last one year, Locky collected around $7.8 million while Cerber collected $6.9 million.

The research also claims the origin of Bitcoin cash conversion was found in Russia, almost 95% of the Bitcoin payments were converted into cash using Russian BTC-e exchange.

One of the founders of BTC-e, Alexander Vinnik, was arrested by Greek police on money laundering charges on July 26. The police were acting on a US warrant and his deportation to America is under consideration.

The criminals behind these attacks are not likely to quit soon, it is paramount to track down their all entry and exit points by the governments and improve cyber security by the tech companies to stay safe. Governments and tech companies have to collaborate and work together to make the internet safer for everyone.