Hey, must be the money!!! We only have to listen to the classic lyrics of Nelly to find the #1 reason cyberattacks exist. The bad people want to get paid! Sure, there are those people out there that just want to cause chaos but that is few and far between. Cyber criminals are the modern-day Jesse James, but instead of pulling bank heists, they are breaking into your network.
Let’s look at 3 ways cyber criminals can line their pockets from a successful cyberattack:
Ransomware
A tale as old as time, ransomware is the quickest most effective way to get you to give money to an attacker. One day, you fire up your computer or your server and you are rewarded with a screen similar to this:
Ransomware encrypts your data and without the encryption key there is no retrieving it. At this point, your choices are to say adios to your data, wipe your PC and restore from your last backup (if you are so lucky to have one) or you pay the threat actor and hope they send you the encryption key.
Data Exploitation
This can come in many different forms. The most common ones are Mr. Grinch has gained access to your computer and has been spying on you so he can grab your credentials, financial data, any personal data, or he fooled you into voluntarily giving your data to him through phishing attempts. Either way, the mean one has grabbed your info and is now finding ways to shake that moneymaker with it.
In more of a business or corporate setting, the attacker is going after internal financial data, customer data, sensitive confidential materials, or even just operational data that can be use against you. Once the data is obtained, they can either use it for direct financial reward (i.e. bank account) or threaten to exploit the data unless you ante up some sort of ransom.
Cryptojacking
This is a newer type of cybercrime that is rising in popularity. In order to mine for cryptocurrency, processor power is needed. Someone can build their own mining farm and spend lots and lots of money or they can tap into the bazillions of devices in the world, steal their processing power and reap financial rewards with very little cost.
How it works is the cybercriminal either gets a user to unknowingly install malicious software or they use a website to autoload and infect someone’s browser. Either way, the attacker is now using the device for unauthorized mining. Cryptojacking scripts aren’t designed to destroy anything on the computer, they are trying to remain hidden so they can tap into the resources and complete the calculations for the mining process. Users are unaware of their existence, but their overall PC performance is now affected.
Ultimately, these attackers really want your hard-earned money, and they are relentless in finding new ways to try to take it from you. So, you need to be relentless on what you click and where you go. To find out ways Kansas City Cyber is there for you, please visit our website at www.kansascitycyber.com.
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