Three months into the successful launch of the No More Ransom project, law enforcement agencies from 13 more countries have signed up to take up the fight against ransomware.
Along with private sectors, law enforcement agencies from these countries are now actively fending off ransomware: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Colombia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. More law enforcement agencies and private sector organisations are expected to join the program in the coming months. This collaboration will result in more free decryption tools becoming available which will help even more victims to decrypt their devices and unlock valuable information, and damage cybercriminals where it hurts the most: their wallets.
No More Ransom was launched on 25 July 2016, by the Dutch National Police, Europol, Intel Security, and Kaspersky Lab, introducing a new level of cooperation between law enforcement and the private sector to fight ransomware together. The aim of the online portal www.nomoreransom.org is to provide a helpful resource for victims of ransomware. Users can find information on what ransomware is, how it works and, most importantly, how to protect themselves.
During the first two months, more than 2,500 people have successfully managed to decrypt their data without having to pay the criminals, using the main decryption tools on the platform (CoinVault, WildFire and Shade). This has deprived cybercriminals of an estimated USD 1+ million in ransoms.