Medusa Ransomware

1.0 Incident

Medusa is a unique product utilized by cybercriminals to encrypt and steal someone's data. Medusa is available to be purchased and is classified as Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) (Herr, 2025). Ransomware as a service is very dangerous because it allows attackers to be less technically capable and opens the opportunity to create a successful attack to a wider range of the population. The Medusa software will Intrude into a system and copy and encrypt the users' stored data. Attackers will then offer a price to the victim to have their data unencrypted, which depending on the value of the data victims are sometimes willing to pay. It is much more likely that a large organization is likely to be targeted with a RaaS attack like Medusa due to the fact they can afford a larger ransom price and also have more valuable data and a reputation to maintain. Another factor that applies in a RaaS attack is whether these attackers really get rid of the copy of the data they have stolen. It is not uncommon for an attacker to take this copy and keep it then return months later and ask for a second ransom or sell the data to people online.

2.0 Analysis

One important question to ask is how attacks are accessing victims' systems to implement the remainder of the attack? Many of these attacks are began using network scanner tools to detect open ports on a person's network (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, 2025). Once an attacker gains access to someone's network they just need to find out where data is stored on the network (Hunter, 2025). Many organizations utilize network drives which store a lot of important data for organizations. However, Medusa has been known to target people through the typical attack vectors which at the moment phishing attacks are the most common attacks we see take place. Once medusa has accessed and encrypted someone's important data, they don't want to be released to the public the ransom is offered. Without the key to the data the victim has one of two choices which is to either pay the ransom and hope the attacker actually deletes their copy or accept they lost the data and start over. It is believed that Medusa is being ran by a group of hackers who are profiting off other hackers buying their product to exploit businesses as well as ordinary people.

3.0 Assessment

As of recently it is projected there has been approximately 300 or more victims of the Medusa attacks (Limehouse, 2025). I see these attacks most likely having the biggest impact on small businesses who can't afford to pay the ransom and also are likely to have lackluster cybersecurity measures. However, this could also have a large impact on an individual who is not tech savvy and has not taken the proper precautions to protect themselves from attacks such as this. This is especially true if it is someone who has some sort of social target on their back such as the wealthy or politicians. The development of these ransomware attacks has begun to be more sophisticated as encryption has improved and so has the effectiveness of these attacks (Tailor & Patel 2017). Encryption protocols improving to keep up with attacks on decrypting sensitive data is now seeming to have some negative side effects. This stolen data could be sold for profit by the attackers and this could have a large variety of effects on the victims. This data could be used to commit identity theft on an individual or be used for things like corporate espionage against an organization.

4.0 Implications

The rise of the Medusa ransomware shows us how one group of hackers can have such a large impact once they decide to distribute their tools or knowledge with each other. There are many steps that organizations as well as individuals can take to not fall victim to Medusa or other ransomware attacks. One of the signs that there has been a successful medusa attempt on your system is a ransom not that is title !!!!READ_ME_MEDUSA!!!.txt (SecurityScorecard, 2024). Stronger security could help prevent against these attacks and should be implemented by large organizations as well as government agencies. Unfortunately, medusa as well as similar style attacks will continue to be an issue. This is because the biggest vulnerability within organizations are the people and phishing attacks as well as untrained employees create successful attacks causing organization wide freezes and possibly large amounts of data loss.

5.0 Solutions

There are ways to prevent to Medusa as well as similar ransomware software. Ransomware is one of the biggest threats in today's world to our computer infrastructure (Reshmi, 2021). One way we can prevent against Ransomware attacks is using Multi Factor Authentication. This tool helps prevent unauthorized access to accounts and can keep intruders from accessing networks if there are username and passwords compromised inside of an organization. Another resource we can use is the 3 2 1 backup rule which is when you keep three different copies of your data using two different types of media with one offsite copy. This would help prevent these attacks because if you are solely worried about data loss in a ransomware attack this would ensure you have a safe copy of your data. However many of the ransomware issues come from not wanting sensitive data out on the internet. Whether this is personal information from a specific person maybe proof they committed a criminal act or just something embarrassing or something that could lose to their money or identity being stolen. In the case of an organization if they lose sensitive client information this could affect their business negatively and it could be better in both of these scenarios to pay the ransom to hope everything goes their way. Another way to prevent against these attacks is giving not only IT but all of the organization training on proper computer usage (Sittig & Singh, 2016). This would help prevent against underlying vulnerabilities such as phishing which can lead to ransomware attacks. However with the proper training and implementing safeguards like multifactor authentication and proper backups organizations and individuals can help prevent being victims to ransomware attacks like medusa.