Ransomware Ecosystem: How Hackers Cash Out Bitcoins

Research at Google presented a study on the ransomware ecosystem recently. The research talks about a variety of popular topics such as the flow of ransom payments from a victim to a hacker and also ways to exchange bitcoins, either by purchasing them or cashing them out. The study also uses graphs to show annual incomes of Locky, Cerber and WannaCry malwares, and the rise of Ransomware as a service, where anyone can become a hacker.

Main points:

• Tracing cash outs of ransom payments.

• Ransomware is a multi-million dollar business in a fast changing market.

• Locky is the oldest and most profitable malware with $1M+ in monthly revenue.

• Share of transactions in bitcoin exchanges

• The most commonly used cash out bitcoin exchange is BTC-e.

You can see the full study here.