Google has announced that it has carried out a study on over 80 million ransomware samples, out of which Israel submitted most. However, the fact is that the internet juggernaut commissioned Cybersecurity company VirusTotal for this project, which recruited a team of experts to analyze the submitted file encrypting malware samples that targeted individuals, government and private networks operating across 140 countries.
VirusTotal concluded countries like South Korea, Israel, Vietnam, China, Singapore, India, Philippines, Iran, and UK were most affected by ransomware attacks in the past three years with United States topping the list.
In the year 2020, GandCrab ransomware as a service group was termed to be super-active, targeting most of the private entity networks. However, the influence of the said group decreased by mid of last year and was replaced by the Babuk Ransomware Group at the first position.
Researchers from Google authorized VirusTotal also detected that 95% of ransomware attacks were targeted at Microsoft Windows Machines. And only 4% found targeting android machines followed by Linux.
Note 1- In June 2021, Google issued a security advisory on ransomware attacks and reemphasized on Chromebook defense and stated that the defense-line of Chrome OS was much better than Windows or Mac.
Note 2- Stephanie Wallace, a senior security analyst from Sophos stated that Chrome Books users experience less cyber attacks as their usage in the OS market is low and hackers are seen developing and targeting windows loaded machines as their operational numbers are more and hitting them makes sense when revenue aspect is considered.
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