The sum of money cybercriminal teams extorted by ransomware (opens in new tab) assaults is down 40% year-on-year, suggesting that companies are more and more refusing to pay to get their delicate information again.

A report from Chainalysis examined cryptocurrency wallets identified to be related to ransomware teams. All blockchain information is pseudonymous and pockets exercise can simply be tracked on-chain. Provided that cybercriminals should share their wallets with their victims, monitoring these wallets is comparatively simple.

That being mentioned, Chainalysis says that in 2022, wallets belonging to identified ransomware teams hoarded a complete of $456.eight million. The yr earlier than, these teams extorted $766 million, a determine nearly equivalent to the 2020 one – $765 million.

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Utilizing totally different variants

The researchers word that the lower in funds isn’t as a consequence of fewer profitable ransomware assaults. Menace actors are as profitable as ever, with greater than 10,000 strains circulating on the web and lurking for his or her subsequent sufferer.

What’s additionally attention-grabbing is that one ransomware group, or affiliate, doesn’t essentially stick to at least one ransomware variant for its operations. In reality, the identical wallets have been noticed receiving funds from victims contaminated with totally different strains of the malware, together with Conti, BlackCat, Black Lotus, LockBit, Sunscript, Hive and others. 

The caveat of the report is that the numbers are almost definitely inconclusive. Whereas monitoring pockets exercise is comparatively simple for the researchers, it’s unimaginable to say in the event that they discovered, and have been monitoring, all of them. 

In any case, some organizations don’t report falling sufferer to this type of cybercrime and it’s potential that further wallets will emerge sooner or later.

The identical factor occurred with the 2022 report, when Chainalysis first thought crooks stole $602 million, as an alternative of the ultimate $766 million complete.

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