Ransomware Attack and its Impact on Society Report 2022

Running head: RANSOMWARE ATTACK AND ITS IMPACT ON SOCIETY
RANSOMWARE ATTACK AND ITS IMPACT ON SOCIETY
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RANSOMWARE ATTACK AND ITS IMPACT ON SOCIETY1
Executive Summary
The main perspective of the report is to put a clear emphasis on the overall concept of the
ransomware cyber-attack. This report emphasizes on the particulars regarding the overall
constraints of ransomware attack that is significantly stated as the mechanism of the overall
working regarding the ransomware as well as the significant threats involved in regards to the
occurrence of the cyber-attack. Moreover, the report also deals with the three most significant
types of the ransomware attacks that had prevailed in the recent times. In addition to this, the
report will tend to provide a clear emphasis on the overall bounds of the ransomware attacks
and provide a clear overview of the attack in regards to the report.

RANSOMWARE ATTACK AND ITS IMPACT ON SOCIETY2
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
2.0 Variants of Ransomware......................................................................................................3
2.1 Crypto Locker..................................................................................................................4
2.2 WannaCry........................................................................................................................4
2.3 Bad Rabbit........................................................................................................................5
3.0 Working mechanism of Ransomware..................................................................................5
4.0 Potential threats involved.....................................................................................................7
5.0 Summary..............................................................................................................................9
6.0 References..........................................................................................................................11

RANSOMWARE ATTACK AND ITS IMPACT ON SOCIETY3
1.0 Introduction
In simple terms, the concept of ransomware may be depicted as the presence of the
malicious software within a computer system that tends to lock down the overall data until
and unless the demanded amount of ransom has been paid. Hence, the name of this data
security threat is stated to be as ransomware. This ransomware attack has been firstly
identified within the computer systems by the late 2013. However, relatively from the start of
this type of attack a thousand of computers are found to be the significant victim in regards to
this type of attack (Brewer, 2016). The concept of ransomware has been mainly derived from
both the fields of effective education regarding the users of the computers as well as the
professionals dealing with the security of data and information and the companies involved in
the manufacturing of the antiviruses.
The impact of this type of data security breach may provide a negative emphasis on
the society as with this attack the overall information stored within a single computer system
may be at risk thus exposing the important information to the attackers involved with such
security breach (Richardson and North, 2017). The significant part of this attack depicts that
once a computer system is infected with ransomware the recovery of the data within the
computer system is a difficult procedure as well as there is no guarantee whether the data can
be recovered even after the ransom is paid.
2.0 Variants of Ransomware
The report will be mainly be considering three variants in the field of the ransomware
that are identified as Crypto Locker, WannaCry as well as Bad Rabbit (Hampton, Baig and
Zeadally, 2018). These are briefly stated as follows: