It disclosed this in its latest report titled “CryptoGuard: An Asymmetric Approach to the Ransomware Battle”.
According to the firm, the report found that some of the most prolific and active ransomware groups, including Akira, ALPHV/BlackCat, LockBit, Royal, and Black Basta, are deliberately switching to remote encryption for their attacks.
“CryptoGuard detected a 62 per cent year-over-year increase in intentional remote encryption attacks since 2022,” it declared.
The cybersecurity firm noted that Sophos CryptoGuard, an anti-ransomware technology that Sophos acquired in 2015 monitors the malicious encryption of files and provides immediate protection and rollback capabilities, including when the ransomware itself never appears on a protected host.
“Companies can have thousands of computers connected to their network, and with remote ransomware, all it takes is one unprotected device to compromise the entire network. Attackers know this, so they hunt for that one ‘weak spot’—and most companies have at least one.”
The Vice President of Threat Research at Sophos, and the co-creator of CryptoGuard Mark Loman, said, “Remote encryption is going to stay a perennial problem for defenders, and based, on the alerts we’ve seen, the attack method is steadily increasing.”
In 2013, CryptoLocker was the first prolific ransomware to utilise remote encryption with asymmetric encryption, also known as public-key cryptography. Since then, adversaries have been able to escalate the use of ransomware, due to ubiquitous, ongoing security gaps at organizations worldwide and the advent of cryptocurrency.
“When we first noticed CryptoLocker taking advantage of remote encryption 10 years ago, we foresaw that this tactic was going to become a challenge for defenders.
“Other solutions focus on detecting malicious binaries or execution. In the case of remote encryption, the malware and execution reside on a different computer (unprotected) than the one having the files encrypted. The only way to stop it is by watching the files and protecting them. That’s why we innovated CryptoGuard,” said Loman.
