Last Year in Ransomware: Overview, Developments and Vulnerabilities

In 2024 the ransomware landscape shifted from volume to precision: fewer overall incidents but much greater sophistication, with threat actors exploiting zero-days and unpatched systems to target high-value organizations and critical infrastructure. The report highlights major groups (notably Cl0p), advanced variants (Qilin.B and Cloak) that use robust encryption and evasion techniques, widespread exploitation of CVEs and file-transfer/VPN tools, and coordinated extortion tactics—resulting in multi-million-dollar demands and significant operational disruption.