The authorities found new facts from a number of ransomware attacks that occurred in Europe. Namely the perpetrator who surrenders and then stops his attack when he sees a security feature on the victim's system.
The security feature in question is multi-factor authentication (MFA), or often also referred to as two-factor authentication (2FA). According to Marijn Schuurbiers, head of operations at the European Cybercrime Center, recently there was a ransomware attack that was canceled because the victim was using MFA.
"We completed an investigation where we monitored the perpetrators of the ransomware. In some investigations, we saw them trying to access the company, but when they encountered two-stage authentication, they immediately stopped the attack and moved on to the next victim," explains Schuurbiers.
From this it can be seen that MFA (or 2FA) has a major impact on security in a system, not only overcoming password theft, but also preventing ransomware attacks.
The reason is, even if the perpetrator manages to steal the victim's password, they still need authentication to be able to log into the system, as quoted by us from Zdnet, Monday (1/8/2022).
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Also alerts from MFA authenticator apps (such as Google Authenticator) to victims when something suspicious happens to their accounts, can help avoid cyber attacks.
"This is very crucial information that companies can use as a strategy against (ransomware). That is if you implement two-stage authentication for your system as a whole -- or maybe specifically for the crown jewel -- you will reduce the chances of becoming a victim of this ransomware group. significantly," he added while speaking on the show No More Ransom.
No More Ransom is an initiative created by Europol, various cybersecurity firm law enforcement agencies, academia, and others, which provides victims with the keys to decrypting ransomware for free.
So far this initiative has helped more than 1.5 million people recover their "kidnapped" files without paying a ransom to the perpetrators.
In addition to 2FA, Europol also recommends companies to regularly back up their data in case the data is stolen by ransomware. Also of course continue to update the security system and operating system with the latest patches.