Ransomware: Recent advances, analysis, challenges and future research directions

Craig Beaman; Ashley Barkworth; Toluwalope David Akande; Saqib Hakak; Muhammad Khurram Khan

doi:10.1016/j.cose.2021.102490

Ransomware: Recent advances, analysis, challenges and future research directions

Comput Secur. 2021 Dec:111:102490. doi: 10.1016/j.cose.2021.102490. Epub 2021 Sep 24.

Authors

Craig Beaman¹, Ashley Barkworth¹, Toluwalope David Akande¹, Saqib Hakak¹, Muhammad Khurram Khan²

Affiliations

¹ Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity, Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick, Canada.
² Center of Excellence in Information Assurance, College of Computer and Information Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh 11653, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has witnessed a huge surge in the number of ransomware attacks. Different institutions such as healthcare, financial, and government have been targeted. There can be numerous reasons for such a sudden rise in attacks, but it appears working remotely in home-based environments (which is less secure compared to traditional institutional networks) could be one of the reasons. Cybercriminals are constantly exploring different approaches like social engineering attacks, such as phishing attacks, to spread ransomware. Hence, in this paper, we explored recent advances in ransomware prevention and detection and highlighted future research challenges and directions. We also carried out an analysis of a few popular ransomware samples and developed our own experimental ransomware, AESthetic, that was able to evade detection against eight popular antivirus programs.

Keywords: Antivirus; COVID-19; Cybersecurity; Malware; Ransomware; Ransomware detection; Ransomware prevention.