More Countries Join The Fight Against Ransomware

Kaspersky Lab, the global security company, announced Monday (Oct. 17) that, three months after launching the No More Ransom project, law enforcement agencies from 13 more countries have signed up to fight ransomware together with the private sector.

In a press release, Kaspersky Lab said the new members include Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Colombia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Additional law enforcement agencies and private sector organizations are expected to join the program in the coming months. This collaboration will result in more free decryption tools becoming available, help for even more victims decrypting their devices and unlocking their information and damaging the cybercriminals where it hurts the most: their wallets.

The No More Ransom initiative was launched on July 25, 2016, by Kaspersky Lab, the Dutch National Police, Europol and Intel Security, introducing a new level of cooperation between law enforcement and the private sector to fight ransomware together. The aim of the online portal (www.nomoreransom.org) is to provide a helpful resource for victims of ransomware. People can find information on what ransomware is, how it works and, most importantly, how to protect themselves.

During the first two months, more than 2,500 people have successfully managed to decrypt their data without having to pay the criminals, using the main decryption tools on the platform (CoinVault, WildFire and Shade). This has deprived cybercriminals of an estimated $1+ million in ransoms.

Currently, five decryption tools are available on the online portal. Since its launch in July, the WildfireDecryptor has been added and two decryption tools updated: RannohDecryptor (updated with a decryptor for the ransomware MarsJoke AKA Polyglot) and RakhniDecryptor (updated with Chimera).

“The fight against ransomware succeeds best when law enforcement agencies and the private sector join forces,” said Jornt van der Wiel, security researcher with the global research and analysis team at Kaspersky Lab, in the press release. “Information sharing is the key to effective collaboration between the police and security researchers. The easier and faster it happens, the more effective the partnership becomes. Getting more law enforcement agencies from different countries on board will therefore improve operational information sharing, so that, in the end, ransomware will be fought more successfully.”