Ransomware-as-a-Weapon (RaaW)

Abstract

The use of information technology has widened in the past few years. With the evolving IT industries and infrastructure comes an ocean of development and opportunities and a series of new cyber threats. Ransomware is an inevitable threat that brings inconceivable devastation that one could hardly imagine. Essentially, ransomware is not a new threat. But it is evolving into a new and massive cyber threat that not only extorts money and sells user data into the darknet but has also started targeting users, forcing them to contribute to any existing social problems, for instance, poverty. Ransomware has mapped its journey from a weaker failure model to a highly evolving business model called ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model. This chapter discusses ransomware from its origin to an evolved cybercriminal business model. It also reveals all those hidden and unexplored consequences and threats that ransomware can bring with it, focusing on future technologies. Apart from looking into the future, the implications of ransomware as a weapon for social problems have been well discussed.