The Evolution of the Data Leak Extortion Ecosystem

This report provides a concise historical review of ransomware from early locker trojans through pivotal variants such as CryptoLocker, Locky, WannaCry/NotPetya, and Maze, highlighting the shift to Ransomware-as-a-Service and dual-extortion tactics where attackers both encrypt data and threaten public leakage; it emphasizes impacts on organizations and recommended mitigations like backups and endpoint security.