By : Basel Khaled

The ransomware landscape experienced significant transformations and challenges in 2023. The year saw a 49% increase in victims reported by ransomware leak sites, with a total of 3,998 posts from various ransomware groups.

What drove this surge of activity? 2023 saw high-profile vulnerabilities like SQL injection for MOVEit and GoAnywhere MFT services. Zero-day exploits for these vulnerabilities drove spikes in ransomware infections by groups like CL0P, LockBit and ALPHV (BlackCat) before defenders could update the vulnerable software.

Leak site data reveals at least 25 new ransomware groups emerged in 2023, indicating the continued attraction of ransomware as a profitable criminal activity. Despite the appearance of new groups such as Darkrace, CryptNet and U-Bomb, many of these new ransomware threat actors did not last and disappeared during the second half of the year.

2023 was an active year for international law enforcement agencies as they intensified their focus on ransomware. This focus led to the decline of groups like Hive and Ragnar Locker and the near collapse of ALPHV (BlackCat). Law enforcement actions in 2023 reflect the increasing challenges faced by ransomware groups.

Ransomware threat actors targeted a wide range of victims with no preference for specific industries.

Leak site data collected by Unit 42 indicates that manufacturing was the most affected industry in 2023 including the EMEA region, signaling significant vulnerabilities in this sector. In the EMEA region, the wholesale and retail industry, along with the professional services industries, were amongst the top three affected industries. Although organizations from at least 120 different countries have been impacted by ransomware extortion, the U.S. stood out as the primary target of ransomware, with 47% of ransomware leak site posts in 2023 revealed victim organizations were based in the U.S.

Palo Alto Networks customers are better protected from the threats discussed in this article through our Next-Generation Firewall with Cloud-Delivered Security Services, including Advanced WildFire, DNS Security, Advanced Threat Prevention and Advanced URL Filtering.

Cortex Xpanse can be used to detect vulnerable services. Cortex XDR and XSIAM customers have been protected from all known active ransomware attacks of 2023 out of the box, without additional protections having to be added to the system.

The Anti-Ransomware Module helps prevent encryption behavior, local analysis helps prevent the execution of ransomware binaries, and Behavioral Threat Protection helps prevent ransomware activity. Prisma Cloud Defender Agents can monitor Windows VM instances for known malware.

Leak Sites and Our Dataset

Analysis for this article is based on data from ransomware leak sites, sometimes known as dedicated leak sites and abbreviated as DLS.

Ransomware leak sites first appeared in 2019, when Maze ransomware began using a double extortion tactic. Stealing a victim’s files before encrypting them, Maze was the first known ransomware group to establish a leak site to coerce a victim and release stolen data.

These threat actors pressure victims to pay – not only to decrypt their files, but to prevent the attackers from publicly exposing their sensitive data. Since 2019, ransomware groups have increasingly adopted leak sites as part of their operations.

Our team monitors data from these sites, often accessible through the dark web, and we review this data to identify trends. Since leak sites are now commonplace among most ransomware groups, researchers often use this data to determine overall levels of ransomware activity and pinpoint the date a specific ransomware group was first active.

However, defenders should use leak site data with caution because it might not always reflect actuality. A ransomware group might start without a leak site as it builds its infrastructure and expands operations. Furthermore, if a victim offers immediate payment, the ransomware incident might not appear on a group’s leak site. As a result, leak sites do not always provide a clear or accurate picture of a ransomware group's activities. The true scope of ransomware's impact might be different from what these sites suggest.

Despite these drawbacks, data pulled from ransomware leak sites provides valuable insight on the state of ransomware operations in 2023.

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