What Google learned after analyzing 80M ransomware samples: 5 things to know

There were more than a hundred active ransomware groups active in 2020, according to an October report by Google Cloud's Virus Total.

For the report, researchers analyzed more than 80 million potential ransomware-related samples submitted over a year and a half. There were 140 countries that submitted samples.

Five things to know:

1. At least 130 ransomware groups were active in 2020, according to an Oct. 13 Google news release. There were peaks of attacks in the first two quarters of 2020 and during July 2021.
   
   
2. The 10 largest ransomware families are WannaCry, Reveton, TeslaCrypt, Cerber, Ryuk, Locky, Rkor, Congur, Matsnu and Magniber.
   
   
3. There are at least 30,000 types of malware. Gancab alone has at least 6,000 types of different malware variations.
   
   
4. Gandcab is the most active ransomware family, which accounted for 78.5 percent of attacks.
   
   
5. Seventy-five percent of ransomware attacks are on Microsoft's windows-based files, whereas 2 percent of attacks are on Android accounts, Virus Total reported. Google's Chrome has had no ransomware attacks, according to the release.