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Cyber extortion is becoming a remunerative industry for criminals and cyber criminals. In this Blog, we are talking about what cyber extortion is, how it is executed in different ways, real-life examples and how to prevent falling onto one of these extortion traps.

What is Cyber Extortion?

Cyber Extortion is an act of criminal when a cyber attacker demands money or something that’s they want through threat in return of returning access to your computer/device, software, network, systems and data. They usually perform the criminal act through ransomware or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS).

2 most common types of Cyber Extortion:

1. Ransomware - Despite its recent decline, Ransomware is still a serious threat. Ransomware is a file-encrypting-malware that targets the victim’s files, especially personal ones. The attacker then demands an amount of ransom ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars payable to cybercriminals through bitcoin. This ransom they require is the key to get the access back from the cybercriminal to the victim. Ransomware attackers usually target big companies and agencies, such as health organizations and financial service sector.

2. DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) - A DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic. DDoS attacks achieve effectiveness by utilizing multiple compromised computer systems as sources of attack traffic. Exploited machines can include computers and other networked resources such as IoT devices. From a high level, a DDoS attack is like an unexpected traffic jam clogging up the highway, preventing regular traffic from arriving at its destination.

Effects of Cyber Extortion:

Some undesired outcomes of cyber extortion include data breaches, business interruption, damage to the company's reputation, loss of customers, and financial losses. This may affect the economy of not only the victim but also the people that depend on him. Huge economic lost will result into lowering the quality of our money because of the lost amount. Customers that became victims may withdraw their relationship with the victimized organizations or person and will cause a lot of jobless person. 17,146, the number of cyber-extortion reports that the FBI received in a recent year. 85% of cyber extortion cases were not reported which cost a lot of damage to the economy.

How to prevent Cyber Extortion?

Cyber Criminals will continue to exploit it constantly as long as they find this method lucrative. Few tips to prevent this criminal act:

· Cyber Extortion is easily persecuted through emails in such companies and organizations. Employees should undergo training that includes identifying suspicious emails, pop-up ads, websites and they should learn how to prevent posting sensitive information which can give private information.

· Make your systems up to date and install fire walls. Download trusted antivirus software if needed.

· Regularly back up and encrypt data for easy recovery and avoidance of downtime ransomware.