Windows users have been the primary ransomware attacks target in the first half of 2021, accounting for a whopping 95% of the cyberattack scheme, the malware scanning tool of Google, VirusTotal, reported.
The tech giant, Google, acquired VirusTotal in 2012, which now receives an alarming bulk of suspicious files reports with an average of two million daily, as per Teiss.co.uk.
What's more, these reports do not just belong to a few regions. In fact, VirusTotal claims that it has received suspicious files from 232 countries on average.
It is to note that the recent study looked into ransomware attacks from January 2020 to August 2021.
Windows Users and Ransomware Attacks
Google's VirusTotal further revealed in its report that the top variants of ransomware in the study are Baduk and Grandcrab.
Upon further observation, the researchers realized that 93.28 percent of the total ransomware files were executables or also known as an exe.file, which is exclusively used on Windows systems.
Teiss further noted in the same report that criminal minds use exe.file in phishing schemes as it directly installs a program or malware to the system as the user clicked its icon.
On top of the exe.file, some Windows cyberattackers used another route in ransomware operations by going with the dynamic link libraries or DLLs, according to a report of the Register.
Chrome OS and Ransomware
Meanwhile, it is worth noting that Google's Chrome OS, a cloud platform, received zero ransomware attacks in the study of VirusTotal.
Nevertheless, Google's mobile operating system, Android, grabs the second of the most targeted platforms in the study with 2.09 percent.
Ransomware Targets: Top 10 Countries
The summary of the Virus Total study revealed that the ransomware samples that they have included from the study were from submissions coming from more than 140 countries.
At the bottom of the top 10 countries facing the most ransomware attacks is the United Kingdom. On the other hand, Israel carries the highest spot.
In addition, South Korea takes the second rank, followed by Vietnam, China, Singapore, India, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, and Iran.
However, it is to note that the study did not account for the total number of ransomware attacks in these countries. Instead, it was only based on the reports that the malware scanning tool has received. Thus, tons of cyberattacks remain to be seen.
Elsewhere, the United States Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network revealed that around $5.2 billion Bitcoin transactions are tied to ransomware attacks.
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Written by Teejay Boris
