Downtime caused by ransomware attacks in the construction sector has cost $46 billion over the past five years.
This total does not include the cost of ransoms paid in 478 attacks since 2018 on manufacturing businesses, with demands varying widely – from just $5,000 in the first recorded case to $50 million.
The hacking groups REvil and LockBitseparately demanded this amount from Acer and Quanta Computer respectively, in 2021. In the first case, Acer offered to pay $10 million, but this offer was rejected by REvil.
Indeed, according to five years of data from 2018 reviewed by researcher Comparitech, there are only four recorded incidents of ransom payments by a manufacturing company.
Although the apparent low rate of successful extortion activity, which may, however, be much higher in reality, has not stopped hacking groups from taking risks, demanding an average of $11.2 million per incident.
And ransomware gangs have become even more confident that they can make a hard bargain in recent years – the first paltry $5,000 demand recorded by Comparitech in 2018 was soon surpassed.
In the second recorded case involving a construction target, the perpetrators demanded an impressive $6 million in 2019, with the average rising to $8.9 million the following year before peaking at $21.9 million in 2021. Last year, ransomware operators somewhat tempered their enthusiasm, with the average demand from nine cases involving the construction sector dropping to $8.8 million.
All of this brings us to the current year, where in the first six months of 2023, four ransomware incidents were recorded in the industry, with an average demand of $1.7 million.
Information source: cybernews.com
