The Role of Cryptocurrencies in the Rise of Ransomware

Cryptocurrency and ransomware have had a long history together. They are so closely intertwined, in fact, that many have blamed the rise of cryptocurrency for a parallel rise in ransomware attacks.

Ransomware attacks are certainly increasing — they rose by 118% in 2018 — but it’s not clear that this is due to cryptocurrency. While the vast majority of ransoms are paid in crypto, the transparent nature of these currencies actually means that they are a pretty bad place to hide stolen funds.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the relationship between cryptocurrency and ransomware, as well as what the future holds.

The ransomware crypto economy

There are at least two ways in which cryptocurrency is important for ransomware attacks. The first one is the most obvious — the majority of the ransoms paid during these kinds of attacks are generally in cryptocurrency. This was the case, for instance, in the WannaCry ransomware attacks, still the largest attack of its kind in…