A Survey on Windows-based Ransomware Taxonomy and Detection Mechanisms

Ransomware remains an alarming threat in the 21st century. It has evolved from being a simple scare tactic into a complex malware capable of evasion. Formerly, end-users were targeted via mass infection campaigns. Nevertheless, in recent years, the attackers have focused on targeted attacks, since the latter are profitable and can induce severe damage. A vast number of detection mechanisms have been proposed in the literature. We provide a systematic review of ransomware countermeasures starting from its deployment on the victim machine until the ransom payment via cryptocurrency. We define four stages of this malware attack: Delivery, Deployment, Destruction, and Dealing. Then, we assign the corresponding countermeasures for each phase of the attack and cluster them by the techniques used. Finally, we propose a roadmap for researchers to fill the gaps found in the literature in ransomware’s battle.