GCHQ Boss: Ransomware Has Doubled in a Year

From infosecurity-magazine.com

The volume of ransomware attacks on UK organizations has doubled over the past year, a British spy chief has warned.

Director of GCHQ, Jeremy Fleming, reportedly made the remarks at the Cipher Brief annual threat conference yesterday.

“I think that the reason [ransomware] is proliferating — we’ve seen twice as many attacks this year as last year in the UK — is because it works. It just pays. Criminals are making very good money from it and are often feeling that that’s largely uncontested,” he said, according to The Guardian.

“In the shorter term we’ve got to sort out ransomware, and that is no mean feat in itself. We have to be clear on the red lines and behaviors that we want to see, we’ve got to go after those links between criminal actors and state actors.”

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