In 2017, the ransomware threat suddenly and spectacularly evolved. Three unprecedented outbreaks transformed the landscape for ransomware, probably forever. The attacks targeted businesses and used worms and recently leaked exploits to self-propagate, encrypting data and demanding a ransom they didn’t really want. The perpetrators of these attacks are unlikely to be the common thieves usually lurking behind ransomware. At least one of the attacks carried flaws that suggest it may have been released too soon, another spread via compromised business software, two are related and the two biggest appear to have been designed for data destruction. The cost to victims of these three attacks is already running into hundreds of millions of dollars. Welcome to ransomware in 2017 – the year global enterprises and industrial systems were added to the ever-growing list of victims, and targeted attackers started taking a serious interest in the threat. It was also a year of consistently high attack numbers, but limited innovation. This short paper highlights some of the key moments.
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