TY - GEN
T1 - On the Economics of Ransomware
AU - Laszka, Aron
AU - Farhang, Sadegh
AU - Grossklags, Jens
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, Springer International Publishing AG.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - While recognized as a theoretical and practical concept for over 20 years, only now ransomware has taken centerstage as one of the most prevalent cybercrimes. Various reports demonstrate the enormous burden placed on companies, which have to grapple with the ongoing attack waves. At the same time, our strategic understanding of the threat and the adversarial interaction between organizations and cybercriminals perpetrating ransomware attacks is lacking. In this paper, we develop, to the best of our knowledge, the first game-theoretic model of the ransomware ecosystem. Our model captures a multi-stage scenario involving organizations from different industry sectors facing a sophisticated ransomware attacker. We place particular emphasis on the decision of companies to invest in backup technologies as part of a contingency plan, and the economic incentives to pay a ransom if impacted by an attack. We further study to which degree comprehensive industry-wide backup investments can serve as a deterrent for ongoing attacks.
AB - While recognized as a theoretical and practical concept for over 20 years, only now ransomware has taken centerstage as one of the most prevalent cybercrimes. Various reports demonstrate the enormous burden placed on companies, which have to grapple with the ongoing attack waves. At the same time, our strategic understanding of the threat and the adversarial interaction between organizations and cybercriminals perpetrating ransomware attacks is lacking. In this paper, we develop, to the best of our knowledge, the first game-theoretic model of the ransomware ecosystem. Our model captures a multi-stage scenario involving organizations from different industry sectors facing a sophisticated ransomware attacker. We place particular emphasis on the decision of companies to invest in backup technologies as part of a contingency plan, and the economic incentives to pay a ransom if impacted by an attack. We further study to which degree comprehensive industry-wide backup investments can serve as a deterrent for ongoing attacks.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85032875707&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-68711-7_21
DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-68711-7_21
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85032875707
SN - 9783319687100
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 397
EP - 417
BT - Decision and Game Theory for Security - 8th International Conference, GameSec 2017, Proceedings
A2 - Kiekintveld, Christopher
A2 - Schauer, Stefan
A2 - An, Bo
A2 - Rass, Stefan
A2 - Fang, Fei
PB - Springer Verlag
T2 - 8th International Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security, GameSec 2017
Y2 - 23 October 2017 through 25 October 2017
ER -