Extortion Hack: Types, Effects and Prevention Methods

Extortion hacks are performed on organisation where money in form of bitcoin is demanded. There are various types of extortion hacks like database extortion, distributed denial of service extortion and so on. This report will broadly discuss these topics. The report will also enlighten on the effects of extortion hacks on organisation and the methods that should be undertaken to prevent cyber security attacks.

Running Head: EXTORTION HACK
EXTORTION HACK
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

2EXTORTION HACK
Executive Summary:
Extortion hacks are performed on organisation where money in form of bitcoin is demanded.
There are various types of extortion hacks like database extortion, distributed denial of service
extortion and so on. This report will broadly discuss these topics. The report will also enlighten
on the effects of extortion hacks on organisation and the methods that should be undertaken to
prevent cyber security attacks.

3EXTORTION HACK
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Discussion........................................................................................................................................4
Types of Extortion Hack..............................................................................................................4
Effect of Extortion Hack..............................................................................................................5
Methods to combat Cyber extortion............................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................9

4EXTORTION HACK
Introduction:
This assignment will focus on extortion hack and its effects on IT industry. The cyber
world has experienced a lot of attacks in the form of ransomware and distributed denial of
service attacks. However, extortion hacks have evolved as one of the main threats where
attackers charge money in return for stopping the attack. Ransomware attacks are performed by
spreading malware through emails and networks that affects few victims paying money to
extortionists. However, extortion hacks affects large number of victims by knowing their point of
weaknesses. Extortionists mainly target victims in the form of bitcoin. Attacks result is loss of
information and money. DDoS extortion hack has evolved as one of the most dangerous attacks
by blending components of both ransomware and DDoS attacks (Agelidis, 2016). The following
paragraphs will enlighten on the types of extortion hacks, effects on IT industry and ways to
combat the effects.
Discussion:
Types of Extortion Hack:
Business organisations have already seen various types of attacks including ransomware
attacks and DDoS attacks. The different types of extortion attacks include:
 Database extortion attacks performed by attackers who target databases of organisations
that are not patched and using versions like MongoDB, Hadoop, Elasticsearch and
MySQL (Richet, 2016). They hack administrative passwords to gain control over targeted
servers and charge specific amount of money in form of bitcoin to retrieve lost data.

5EXTORTION HACK
 Denial of service attacks and Distributed Denial of Service attacks that targets
organisation and charge payment for stopping the attack. In a number of cases, attackers
demand money for not conducting the attack.
 Ransomware frauds in which devices of victims are infected with malware that blocks
access of authorised users to the network. Attackers charge ransom to regain access to
network and devices. Malware is spread through infected mail attachments that will be
downloaded if the user clicks on the attachments.
 Another common form of cyber extortion is cyber blackmail that is performed by
criminals to breach network of organisations and discover valuable data. Recently, in
2017 hackers discovered episodes of Netflix series Orange Is the New Black that was still
not released by the streaming company when they refused to pay the blackmailers. Cyber
extortionist also threatened HBO in the same year to release the episodes of Game of
Thrones that was unaired when they refused to pay the blackmailers $5.5 million in the
form of bitcoin (Tirranen, 2018). Extortionists also attacked Ashley Madison in 2015.
Effect of Extortion Hack:
The percentage of loss in ransomware attacks are increasing day by day as reported by
Cybersecurity ventures. Reports also estimated that cost of damage from ransomware would be
greater than $11.5 billion in the year 2019. The loss will be $325 million greater than in the year
2015 (Poonia, 2014). Organisations that face cyber extortions not only experience loss of
valuable corporate data, also faces damage to reputations, loss of customers and money. The
annual report of Cybersecurity ventures revealed that damage through ransomware is increasing
at yearly rate of 350%.

6EXTORTION HACK
The process of cyber extortion can be explained with a small example. It is compared
with a scenario where burglars break into the house however do not cause harm to property.
They take pictures of personal assets and precious belongings. Later on that day, victim receives
message along with pictures that if the victim is keen to know how they broke into the house
then he will have to pay large sums of money. This method is similar to extortion hacks and is
referred to as bug poaching (Kumar & Kumar, 2013). The attackers and hackers identifies
weaknesses and vulnerabilities from every organisation’s website and then performs SQL
injection (Shoukat & Bashir, 2018). The attack steals all sensitive data from the servers of
organisation. The attackers can even threaten organisations to reveal personal and sensitive data.
Cyberextortionists also targets private data of victims like personal photos and videos and
threatens to reveal them in public if demanded amount is not paid to them.
Methods to combat Cyber extortion:
Attackers and hackers are continuously searching for vulnerabilities of organisations or
victims to exploit. They target victims that are willing and are able to pay. Therefore, companies
should take measures to combat extortion hacks. Victims who are willing to fight against cyber
extortion should first implement strong cyber defenses that would help them resist themselves
against any type of security attacks (Syngle, 2017). The steps that organisation should follow are:
 Develop backup strategies and strategies for encrypting personal sensitive data. The
procedures for recovery should be tested regularly so that the downtime for ransomware
and other cyber security attacks can be reduced.
 Disaster recovery plans should be formulated to ensure that the company is able to fight
against cyberattack.

7EXTORTION HACK
 Employees of any organisation are one of the main part of defence team. Therefore, they
should be trained with elementary knowledge of phishing so that they can identify such
attempts and take necessary actions. Company should also train its employees not to post
sensitive data on social media that might be vulnerable to extortion hacks.
 Bug poaching is the main method of performing extortion hacks. To prevent this
penetration testing is used for identifying vulnerabilities in Web Applications.
 Vulnerability scanning should be done regularly on both internal and external systems. It
should be included in security policy of all organisations.
 Web application firewalls and intrusion prevention systems should be used that would
provide strong protection against cyber security attacks.
Other basic steps that can be taken to prevent extortion hacks are keeping all system software
and antiviruses up to date so that cyber extortionists do not get an opportunity to exploit the
weakness (Salvi & Kerkar, 2016). This will also strengthen the internal network of organisation
along with limiting access to it. Implementing risk management and analysis programs would
also prove beneficial, as they are the standard methods of mitigating cyber extortions.
Conclusion:
From the above discussions, it can be concluded that extortion attacks are one of the
sophisticated attacks that affects large number of people. The victims experience monetary loss
as they extortion hackers charge ransom for retrieving lost data. Ransomware attacks and
extortion hacks are more or less similar with few differences. Ransomware attacks are performed
by spreading malware through emails and networks that affects few victims paying money to
extortionists. However, extortion hacks affects large number of victims by knowing their point of
weaknesses. Extortionists mainly target victims in the form of bitcoin. Attacks result is loss of

8EXTORTION HACK
information and money. Reports revealed that extortion hacks are growing at an annual rate of
350% accounting to total increase of $325 million loss between 2015 and 2018. Recent extortion
hacks have been performed on Netflix and HBO where cyber extortionists revealed unreleased
episodes of “Orange Is the New Black” and “Game of Thrones” respectively. Attackers and
hackers are continuously searching for vulnerabilities of organisations or victims to exploit. They
target victims that are willing and are able to pay. Therefore, companies should take measures to
combat extortion hacks. Therefore, to fight against cyber security attacks companies should take
basic steps of updating antiviruses and system software regularly so that attackers do not get a
chance to exploit the vulnerability. Standard mitigation steps like implementing risk analysis and
management programs will help to identify weaknesses and therefore take necessary actions to
prevent attacks.

9EXTORTION HACK
References:
Agelidis, Y. (2016). Protecting the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Exposure Data Breaches and
Suggestions for Coping with Them. Berkeley Tech. LJ, 31, 1057.
Chang, L. Y., Zhong, L. Y., & Grabosky, P. N. (2018). Citizen co‐production of cyber security:
Self‐help, vigilantes, and cybercrime. Regulation & Governance, 12(1), 101-114.
Kumar, S. M., & Kumar, M. R. (2013). Cryptoviral Extortion: A virus based approach.
International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT), 4(5), 1149-1153.
Martin, G., Kinross, J., & Hankin, C. (2017). Effective cybersecurity is fundamental to patient
safety.
Poonia, A. S. (2014). Cyber Crime: Challenges and its Classification. International Journal of
Emerging Trends & Technology in Computer Science (IJETTCS), ISSN, 2278-6856.
Richet, J. L. (2016). Extortion on the internet: the rise of crypto-ransomware. Harvard.
Salvi, M. H. U., & Kerkar, M. R. V. (2016). Ransomware: A cyber extortion. ASIAN JOURNAL
FOR CONVERGENCE IN TECHNOLOGY (AJCT)-UGC LISTED, 2.
Shoukat, S., & Bashir, A. (2018). Cyber Crime-Techniques, Prevention and Cyber Insurance.
International Journal of Computing and Network Technology, 6(01), 23-26.
Syngle, T. (2017). An overview of corporate cybercrime in India and US. International Journal
of Cyber-Security and Digital Forensics, 6(2), 62-73.
Tirranen, V. A. (2018). CryPTOvirAL ExTOrTiON AS A gLOBAL PrOBLEm OF
CyBErSECuriTy. Criminal Justice and Security in Central and Eastern Europe, 548.