Blockchain: Tool for Controlling Ransomware through Pre-Encryption and Post-Encryption Behavior

ABSTRACT

Ransomware is a malware practice which cyber criminals usually inject through phishing practices to make money as their priority. With the high rise in the use of the internet amid the COVID phase, the cyber world is also reaching its peak as well. The attacker is also getting smarter with technology. We in this paper are taking blockchain technology as a weapon to fight against the terror of ransomware attacks, as this is the most notorious and devastating attack of all, and there is no doubt that it is going to be with us in the future too. Detection of ransomware attacks before they infect and decode the data is a complex thing. Several algorithms exist to detect attacks at their early stages, but the lack of information about the pre and post behavior similarities is proving to be an obstacle to accurately observing and detecting ransomware at its very first stage rather than making sense of paying the ransom and even not being sure of getting back the confidentialities. With the use of blockchain technology, we focus on making a record of the pre-encryption and post-encryption behaviour of ransomware attacks so that it is not going to be complex to track the nature, similarities, and behaviour of ransomware attacks. With inaccurate availability of data about pre and post behaviour of attacks and also weak design of detection models, both have a negative impact on selecting the features and similarities of the attack and thus developing a design model for the same. The paper is focusing on one of the most challenging variations of ransomware attacks, i.e., the crypto ransomware. Many researches before proposed solutions as performing regular backup of files but this measure has a significant overhead too as key backup schemes results in high computational cost as well. Thus, with the use of blockchain for gathering and maintaining records, we expect to be prepared for every unexpected attack. © 2022 IEEE.