The ransomware revolution : how emerging encryption technologies created a prodigious cyber threat

The increasing public availability of encryption technologies, and the parallel emergence of cryptocurrencies, have elevated ransomware to become the most prodigious cyber threat that enterprises now confront. The advent of cryptocurrencies provided the catalyst for increased profitability from ransomware, sparking a phenomenal rise in the number and complexity of ransomware attacks. This thesis is among the first academic works to analyse what has been dubbed the ‘ransomware revolution’ after a series of major attacks beginning in 2013. This threat is compounded by a disconnect between academia, the professional services industry, and vendors. This research brings together two strands of analysis. First, it documents the emergence of encryption-centric technologies that have created an environment conducive to undertaking this type of cyber-attack. The ease of public access to advanced encryption techniques has allowed malicious actors to operate with increased anonymity across the internet. This has enabled increased collaboration between attackers, which has aided the development of new ransomware attacks, and led to an increasing level of technical complexity in ransomware attacks. Concurrently, the potential attack surface has exponentially increased through the rapid adoption of internet and interconnected user devices. Second, using four brief case studies, and other analysis, the dissertation documents the inadequacies of responses to ransomware. Deterrence and defensive strategies to this form of attack have remained relatively static. In spite of granular knowledge about the attack vectors of ransomware, leading policy makers attest that analysis of the scale and scope of such cyber security problems has so far confounded the few researchers actively engaged in it. Data is not made available in any consistent way by the victims which impedes information sharing and inhibits open source cyber security research. The challenge to prevent and manage ransomware attacks is compounded by a global cyber-skills shortage coupled with the absence of a definitive set of reliable countermeasures. This research assesses that the continuous expansion and early adoption of emerging technologies may be beyond the capacity of conventional risk managers and risk management frameworks. The dissertation concludes that many governments and corporations lack the required cyber expertise, training, and effective expenditure of resources to understand, prepare for, and manage ransomware attacks against their organisations systems