(Bloomberg) – Cyberattacks involving ransomware — in which criminals use malicious software to encrypt a users' data and then extort money to unencrypt it — increased 50 percent in 2016, according to a report from Verizon Communications Inc.
And criminals increasingly shifted from going after individual consumers to attacking vulnerable organizations and businesses, the report said. Government organizations were the most frequent target of these ransomware attacks, followed by health-care businesses and financial services, according to data from security company McAfee Inc., which partnered with Verizon on the report published Thursday.
Instances of ransomware attacks have grown along with the market for bitcoin, the digital currency that is most commonly how cybercriminals demand ransoms be paid because of its anonymity.
|Malware raids with phishing email
While overall most malware was delivered through infected websites, increasingly criminals were turning to phishing — using fraudulent emails designed to get a user to download attachments or click on links to websites that are infected with malware — to carry out attacks. A fifth of all malware raids began with a phishing email in 2016, while fewer than 1 in 10 did the year before, according to the report.
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