Cisco Disrupts Extensive Network Of Cyber Criminals

Network manufacturer Cisco has disrupted an extensive exploit kit network that criminals tried to infect surfers with ransomware and other malware. How many people have been victimized and how many criminals have earned the ransomware is unknown.

The action was directed against the Cisco Angler-exploitkit, used by cyber criminals to infect Internet users via vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player, Silverlight and Internet Explorer with malware. Cisco researchers discovered that the Angler-exploitkit used a large number of proxy servers, which were located primarily in the provider Limestone Networks. The study showed that the Angler-exploitkit one party was used extensively. This party was for 50% of all activity of the Angler exploit responsible and tried every day 90,000 people to infect via the aforementioned vulnerabilities.

Infections can only occur when users are using vulnerable software, for example, because they have no security updates have been installed. By working with Limestone was extensive information about the Angler-exploitkit are collected.Eventually all hosting providers where the proxy servers were informed, who then Switch off servers. Therefore, the cyber criminals had no access to the Angler-exploitkit.

Juggling With Figures

Cisco sets the announcement about the operation that cyber criminals through the exploitkit $ 60 million per year earned by ransomware. It is important to mention that this is an assumption and not a fixed amount. There is no hard evidence how many criminals have earned through their ransomware. The estimate of Cisco is based on several assumptions. For example, pointed to previous research showing that 40% of Internet users being attacked via the Angler-exploitkit also touches actually infected.

Further, it would be installed in 62% of infections via Angler ransomware. In addition, the average ransomware amount would be $ 300. According to figures from Symantec would actually pay 2.9% of the victims. Because all that matters to multiply with each Cisco eventually comes to an amount of 60 million dollars. As stated, this is an unconfirmed amount based on certain assumptions.

Thus, researchers from Dell SecureWorks to 0.4% of the ransomware victims pay the demanded ransom. Other studies a percentage of 0.27% to the front. If Cisco with these percentages, the amount would have expected would be much lower outage, which includes fluctuations in the number of successful infections and the number of ransomware installations.