"Ransomware Volumes Hit Record Highs as 2021 Wears On"

Researchers at SonicWall found that the second quarter of this year saw the highest volumes of ransomware attacks ever. Ransomware has seen a significant uptick so far in 2021. The FBI has warned that there are now 100 different ransomware strains circulating around the world. The researchers stated that the ransomware scourge hit a staggering 304.7 million attempted attacks within SonicWall Capture Labs’ telemetry. To put that in perspective, the firm logged 304.6 million ransomware attempts for the entirety of 2020. The top three ransomware strains seen in the wild by the firm are Ryuk, Cerber, and SamSam. The researchers recorded 93.9 million instances of Ryuk in the first half of 2021, a number that is triple the number of Ryuk attempts seen in the first six months of 2020. Researchers also saw Cerber used in 52.5 million recorded hits in the first half of 2021. Researchers said that Cerber is definitely on the rise and found that the number of attacks nearly quadrupled in April, and by May, it had risen to nearly five times the levels seen in January. There were also 49.7 million recorded instances of SamSam in SonicWall’s numbers for the first half of 2021, which is more than double the volume seen during the entire year of 2020. The researchers stated that June alone saw 15.7 million hits, which is more than two-thirds of the 23.5 million SamSam hits seen for all of last year.

Threatpost reports: "Ransomware Volumes Hit Record Highs as 2021 Wears On"