Cyber-crime gangs’ earnings have dropped as businesses and other victims refuse to pay demands after ransomware groups extorted approximately $457 million from victims in 2022 – $311m less than the year before.

Despite cybercrimals loses in ransomware payment demands, the number of unique ransomware strains being used in attacks increased dramatically in 2022.

The rise in the amount of cyberattacks in the prior year may have been linked to enforcement measures taken mainly by U.S authorities, resulting in a some of the most prominent ransomware gangs being dismantled.

Chainalysis, one of the world’s leading financial cryptocurrency platforms says ransomware groups and cyber-crime gangs extorted at least U.S$457 million from victims in 2022 – $311m less than the year before.

Experts agree that fewer victims are paying ransoms and there has been a drop in criminal revenue. However, the number and frequency of attacks are still rising.

To date, governments have not made it illegal to pay cyber or ransomware group payments. However, cyber-experts believe that US sanctions against hacker groups have made paying some of these groups extremely risky from a legal perspective.

In November 2022 the Australian government suggested placing a ban on ransomware payments to decrease the profitability of data breaches for criminal organisations including cyber criminals and ransomware gangs.

Nonetheless, in comparison to the recent security breaches at Optus and Medibank in Australia, many organisations are forking out money to pay ransoms in order to decrypt their computers and release the strangle hold on their internal networks & customer data.

In some reported cases of ransomware attacks, cyber-criminals thoroughly encrypted all company information, computers, and backups, leaving no chance to restore the data.

In the first half of 2022, cyber-security company Fortinet identified more than 10,000 different varieties of malicious software.