Beware the New AI-Fueled Ransomware Boom

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With so much going on all the time, you may not have thought about ransomware and data extortion attacks in a minute, even though they’ve been among the the biggestcybersecurity threats to institutions—and, by extension, people—over the past decade. But in the new era of AI-powered and automated cyberattacks, the danger posed by ransomware is only increasing as cybercriminals profit by combining established methods with new techniques made possible or more accessible by AI.

It is difficult to determine exact numbers of ransomware attacks, given that victims don’t always disclose incidents and attackers wildly inflate their claims. But researchers who specialize in tracking and attempting to de-duplicate the field agreethat...

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