Ransomware 3.0: The Autonomous Threat That Changed Everything

**Executive summary:** This report characterizes "Ransomware 3.0" as an autonomous, LLM-orchestrated ransomware ecosystem that combines runtime-synthesized polymorphic payloads, triple extortion, industrialized RaaS services, decentralized C2 (IPFS/blockchain), and advanced evasion (EDR-killers, BYOVD, LoTL), documents a research prototype (PromptLock) and real-world trends (7,419 incidents in 2025, rising supply-chain attacks), and provides mitigation guidance including zero trust, AI-aware behavioral detection, immutable backups, and supply-chain monitoring.