A report issued by “Group-IP” revealed that the private data of up to 147 companies from the Middle East and Africa region were downloaded and published on information leakage sites specialized in ransomware attacks, during the period between the first quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.
The report stated that at the level of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the data of 44 companies from 4 Gulf countries were published, reports a local Arabic daily.
The results of the second edition of the report indicated that the ransomware empire maintained its winning streak, as the average demand for this software increased by 45 percent to reach $247,000 during the year 2021, and ransomware gangs became more greedy since 2020.
Based on analysis of more than 700 attacks during 2021, Group-IB’s digital forensics and incident response experts estimated that average demand for ransomware was $247,000 in 2021, a 45 percent increase compared to 2020. Ransomware has evolved as it has higher levels of complexity, which is clearly evident in the downtime of the victims of these attacks, which increased from 18 days in 2020 to 22 days in 2021.
