Ransomware attacks spread more quickly than most organizations can respond. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is on a mission to investigate more than 100 different variants of ransomware, many of which have been used extensively in various cyberattack campaigns.
Bryan Vorndran, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division has explained his team’s efforts against the malware threats to the United States House Committee on the Judiciary in Washington.
Following the incident, Bryan Vorndran said that “There is not a day that goes by without multiple FBI field offices responding to ransomware attacks. The ransomware threat is not new, and it has been one of the FBI’s top cybercriminal investigative priorities for some time, but we have seen ransomware attack reporting increase significantly in the past two years, and the impact of these attacks has grown to dangerous proportions, threatening our economic and national security.”
According to new data published by the FBI this week, cyberattackers wreaked havoc across the U.S., resulting in a record-high number of cyber threat complaints.
Describing the rise in ransomware attacks, Vorndran said that from 2019 to 2021, the number of ransomware complaints reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) increased by 82%, with a 449% rise in ransom payments and more than 847,000 total complaints that corresponded with crimes had cost victims an estimated sum exceeding $6.9 billion.
“Ransomware-as-a-service’ (when a developer sells or leases ransomware tools to criminal customers) has decreased the barrier to entry and technological savviness needed to carry out and benefit from these compromises and increased the number of criminals conducting ransomware campaigns,” noted Vorndran.
Further, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate has said that the bureau’s cyber division is investigating and working harder than before against the surging cyber threats to protect people.
He further said, “We can put a cyber-trained FBI agent on nearly any doorstep in this country within one hour, and we can accomplish the same in more than 70 countries in one day through our network of legal attachés and cyber assistants legal attachés.”
