In a recent hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the increasing number of ransomware attacks, it was said that the rise in these attacks is partly the result of the growth of cryptocurrencies. In these ransomware attacks, hackers are making computer systems useless by locking up data and are extorting money in the form of cryptocurrencies. Cybercriminals use cryptocurrencies as a safer medium to carry out such activities because crypto crosses borders easily and is quite difficult to trace. A new level of protection against these criminal activities can be provided by blockchains and cryptocurrency services. Projects like Filecoin, Arweave, Storj, and Skynet have distributed storage which can help in curbing these ransomware attacks.
According to some experts, many large organizations are making small changes from time to time to protect legacy systems. However, if the IT teams are not careful about the doorways, all these protections could break down. It could be possible that the IT teams do not segment the network properly. As a result of this, an employee could end up with access to the database and storage and could end up letting the hacker in inadvertently.
Some of the ways in which these attacks can be prevented are as follows-
· Decentralized storage: Storage that is decentralized or distributed shifts the playing field for cybercriminals, as the data ends up in multiple places in pieces or copies. As a result, the hacker would have to compromise multiple security protocols in different places.
· Distributed copies: Data should be stored in different storage nodes around the world with the help of Storj.
· Filling the script: Using Skynet service and Sia blockchain offers companies a more distributed approach. Skynet allows each user to control the data, which makes things difficult for the attackers as the scalability of the attacks is reduced.
