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I get the impression you're taking what you know of attacks against consumers, and just assuming that attacks against large organizations work the same way. They (generally) don't.

With a consumer attack it's get execution on a computer, encrypt some files, and ransom them back. This might earn a few hundred dollars per computer, and isn't worth putting a whole lot of effort into any individual.

At a corporate level it's get some level of access, use that access to get control of a whole lot more access - and also to get control of servers that actually matter instead of users workstations that mostly don't. Maybe try and delete the backups, often exfiltrate a bunch of data, then encrypt things. If you exfiltrated the data the ransom potentially includes not just the offer to decrypt things but also a promise not to distribute the exfiltrated data.

This is all reasonably high touch "work". They've got to figure out how to move laterally inside that specific companies network. They've need to figure out what data is actually important (especially if the goal is to sell it). And so on. Unfortunately it appears to pay well enough to justify the effort. Companies are routinely paying millions of dollars in ransom.

I don't have stats to back this up (internal or otherwise), but my impression is that most successful attacks against enterprise targets are phishing attacks targeting employees to steal credentials.



Thanks that is insightful




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