Reasoning crypto ransomware infection vectors with Bayesian networks

Abstract

Ransomware techniques have evolved over time with the most resilient attacks making data recovery practically impossible. This has driven countermeasures to shift towards recovery against prevention but in this paper, we model ransomware attacks from an infection vector point of view. We follow the basic infection chain of crypto ransomware and use Bayesian network statistics to infer some of the most common ransomware infection vectors. We also employ the use of attack and sensor nodes to capture uncertainty in the Bayesian network.