Fileless malware is a significant threat difficult to detect. A secondary concern with fileless malware is that it can often bypass current security controls and penetrate the system through the attack surface of legitimate programs. Fileless malware is not always easy to understand. Here we will look closer at one of its kind, fileless ransomware.
What is Fileless Malware?
Fileless malware is a type of malicious software that does not require installation on the computer. Such malware hides in the computer system and piggybacks on legitimate programs by performing malicious activity. The biggest difference between traditional malware and fileless malware is that the first one relies on executable files.Fileless malware is not file-based but memory-based. In other words, it leaves no footprint to be detected.
What is Fileless Ransomware?
Fileless ransomware is a technique when a malicious code is embedded in a native scripting language or written straight into the memory using legitimate administrative tools. It can be injected into some running process and executed only in RAM. Fileless ransomware exploits the system vulnerability and writes itself directly into memory. It can be hidden in documents and within documents. It is extremely difficult to detect as it uses signature-based methods or even machine learning analytics.
What does Fileless Ransomware do?
Fileless ransomware is designed to deny a user access to files on the computer. It often starts with a phishing email including a malicious link that can redirect a user to an infected website by clicking it. The goal is to detect vulnerability in the user’s computer and exploit it. The most common attack is the data theft where it requires a ransom payment in order to access the user’s data again. Such attacks are very dangerous because it is difficult to disable, isolate or remove such codes.
How to stop Fileless Ransomware?
We suggest:
- Focus on malicious activity instead of malicious files
- Use anti-malware solutions to reveal malicious activity
- Use AI or ML- behavioural- based analytics
- Continuous monitoring of phishing emails
- Run a constant memory analysis
- Have up-to-date software applications
- Have up-to-date browser
With fileless ransomware, attackers have found a way to infect your computer without using files. Book a demo to learn how you can improve your human part of cyber security and decrease vulnerability online. !
