Longtime readers of this column know that I am a huge fan of all
things cloud — until now.
Ramsomware is a type of malware that encrypts a target's
software files, forcing them to pay a "ransom" for their
decryption. It's not new — it has been around since the
early 1990s — but what is new is the increasing
threat posed by the efficiencies of a cloud-based delivery system
known as ransomware as a service. RaaS is a criminal variant of
software as a service, or SaaS, whereby cybercriminals provide the
platform and related ransomware services (everything from delivery
to taking payment to tracking the progress of the extortion) for a
fixed fee or percentage of the ransom payment. Basically, it has
become very easy to just log in to the portal of a favorite RaaS
dark web vendor, pay the fees to get started (sometimes as low as
$US39!) and distribute malware to their victims without having to
actually write their own malicious code. No real technical skills
necessary.
