SamSam ransomware payments reach nearly $6 million

New research reveals SamSam ransomware campaign has generated almost $6 million for attacker and appears to be the work of a single hacker who shows no sign of slowing down. The long-running SamSam ransomware campaign, active since early 2016, has apparently earned its perpetrators nearly $6 million in ill-gotten gains -- and the pace of the campaign is picking up. According to Sophos' new report, titled "SamSam: The (Almost) Six Million Dollar Ransomware," the evidence shows the campaign is unlike "traditional" ransomware campaigns, which spread through phishing or other shotgun approaches that aim to maximize the number of infections. Sophos researchers found that SamSam is run by an extremely well-organized threat actor who carefully targets and hacks into victim systems directly, using conventional system administration and penetration testing tools to infect and evade detection -- in real time. "Unlike virtually every other ransomware attack, the entire attack process is manual. No badly worded spam email with an attachment is the culprit.