Ransomware as a service is a business model where the customers or the malicious party use the ransomware developed by the experienced hacker. They may pay a certain amount, or a certain percentage of the total ransom received using this tool or code. This may be an example of software as a service.

And the best part of RaaS is the person who uses this service does not need to know anything about coding. In the past, any attacker needs to have a good amount of knowledge in coding to initiate the attacks. But with the model of Raas, the user is not required to know even the basics of coding and still can execute the attack.

This increasing trend of Raas gives a huge disadvantage to cybersecurity experts. The number of ransom attacks has been on the increasing graph ever since the Raas model was started. Companies or organizations of all sizes are trying their best to increase their cybersecurity to reduce the victimization of Raas.

Ransomware attacks are found to be always on the rise. According to the report jointly given by The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the FBI, and the NSA, ransomware attacks in 2022 will only be on the rising side.

The most dangerous thing about Raas is it’s very easy to find. It becomes like ordinary goods sold on a market. Some Raas kits even have 24/7 support; other offers, there are forums on this kind of service to provide user services. They follow the same kind of treatment as SaaS. This kind of Raas service is not much costly too. If they buy a kit for 40 to 50$, they can earn up to thousands of dollars if the attack is successful. The person who uses RaaS needs a few attacks to succeed in becoming a rich person.

The way RaaS work

• First, the skilled ransomware developer will create a new kind of ransomware that is unlikely to be discovered by the organization’s firewall or cybersecurity team. This itself will give a high chance of a successful attack.
• The developed code is then advertised in the designated forum or in other ways. The code will be developed to be modified easily to meet the multi end-user infrastructures. The developers mostly use cloud concepts, so it will be easy for users to use. We can call the customer’s affiliates.
• Next, the affiliates will spread the malware. It may be a targeted attack or send the malware on the internet and wait for the user to get phished. It should be noted that phishing attack may look simple but causes more damage.
• If the attack were successful, the money would be distributed among the affiliates and developers, as discussed earlier. There are many methods for this distribution, which will be explained briefly on the following page. It should be noted that most of the ransom was asked in cryptocurrency nowadays. This is to make use of the advantage of blockchain technology.

The model of RaaS

Almost all the RaaS methods will come under this kind of model. This model is based on profit distribution profits between the developer and affiliates.