Chapter 2: The Life Cycle of a Human-Operated Ransomware Attack

Human-operated ransomware attacks may be very complex, especially if we are talking about Big Game Hunting – attacks on huge enterprises. So, before diving into the technical details, it's very important to understand the life cycle of a typical attack. Understanding the attack life cycle helps security professionals to both perform proper reconstruction of an incident and make adequate decisions at various stages of the incident response life cycle.

As you already know from Chapter 1, The History of Human-Operated Ransomware Attacks, a ransomware strain can be operated by a group or multiple threat actors, if we are talking about ransomware-as-a-service programs. What does this mean? Tactics, techniques, and procedures may be quite different, but for most cases the attack life cycle will still be quite similar, as threat actors usually have two main goals – to exfiltrate sensitive information out...