In a nutshell
What is Ranflood
Ranflood is an anti-crypto-ransomware tool that counteracts the encryption phase by flooding specific folders (e.g., the attacked location; the user's folders) with decoy files and helps users recover their files after an attack.
This action has a twofold effect.
First, it confounds the genuine files of the user with decoy files, drawing the attacking ransomware to waste time on sacrificial data rather than on the victim's genuine files.
Second, the file-flooding IO-intensive activity contends with the ransomware to access the victim's computing resources, further slowing down the attack of the malware.
Conceptually, we call this approach Data Flooding against Ransomware.
Learn more on the principles behind how Ranflood contrasts ransomware
Ransomware
Ransomware is one of the worst types of computer virus. A ransomware attack penetrates the victim's computer and seizes the user's data, rendering it useless unless a ransom is paid.
An estimated $20 billion was extorted worldwide in 2021 through ransomware, compounded by incalculable sunk costs that users and businesses face due to computer equipment rendered useless. Currently, due to the ease of penetrating computer systems and exploiting user's attachment to their data, ransomware has very high extortion leverage, so much so that it has become a favourite tool of cyber criminals, who have gone from an arsenal consisting of 28 percent ransomware in 2018 to 67 percent in 2021.
Some striking cases that have happened recently include the attack on the computer network of the U.K. health service, the attack on Ukrainian institutions (even going so far as to disable some monitors at the Chernobyl power plant).
The attacks affect individuals, private companies, and the public sector. Specifically, the last category is particularly targeted precisely because of the extent of the damage done both in the case of data theft (usually involving personal information of citizens and companies) and because these provide essential services to the community, which allows criminals to demand even larger ransoms.