Ransomware Victims Have Paid Out More than $25 Million, Google Study Finds
- Russell Brandom for The Verge July 25th, 2017
- Source: https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/25/16023920/ransomware-statistics-locky-cerber-google-research
Ransomware victims have paid more than $25 million in ransoms over the last two years, according to a study presented today by researchers at Google, Chainalysis, UC San Diego, and the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. By following those payments through the blockchain and comparing them against known samples, researchers were able to build a comprehensive picture of the ransomware ecosystem. … “Locky’s big advantage was the decoupling of the people who maintain the ransomware from the people who are infecting machines,” says NYU [Tandon School of Engineering] professor Damon McCoy, who worked on the project.