Details on CryptoWall

This article assumes that you are familiar with my previous article CryptoLocker - Revisited.

Detailed information was released about CryptoWall, one of the CryptoLocker variants.

Between mid-March and late August CryptoWall infected almost 625,000 systems; on these systems it encrypted more than 5.25 billion files.

The US seems to have the most CryptoWall infections: 253,521 (or about 40 percent), followed by Vietnam with 66,590 infections, the U.K. with 40,258, Canada with 32,579 and India with 22,582.

The US likely got targeted more often because CryptoWall's got distributed through spam emails sent from the Cutwail botnet which targets English language computer users.

Researchers collected data directly from CryptoWall's  payment server such as the exact number of paying victims and the amount of payments. Of nearly 625,000 infections and over about six months 1,683 victims (0.27%) paid the ransom for a total of $1,101,900.

CryptoWall seems to have  a home-made problem by accepting payment of ransom by Bitcoin only. Many average computer users will have problems paying with Bitcoin and reseachers assume that this is part of the reason that only 0.27% of CryptoWall's victims paid compared to 1.3% of CryptoLocker victims; CryptoLocker allowed payment by MoneyPak as well.

As sad as it is, these numbers clearly show that cyber crime pays.


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