The COVID-Effect on Ransomware

Resources March 25, 2020

The COVID-Effect on Ransomware

The cascade of school closures and empty offices due to the COVID-19 pandemic will give ransomware actors an unprecedented landscape of opportunity. Kivu’s case metrics show that at least 54% of ransomware attacks we’ve investigated in 2020 were deployed over the weekend, up from the 37.5% of attacks that we responded to in 2019. This increase aligns with the trend of targeted attacks over opportunistic attacks, and elevated sophistication among ransomware distributors. We can expect threat actors to recognize and take advantage of their greater odds.

In this latest Threat Intel report, we list the other effects we expect COVID-19 will have on ransomware.