Article
Endpoint Detection and Response: The Closest Thing to a Silver Bullet to Stop Ransomware
Security Recommendations
In its recent report “Combating Ransomware,” the Ransomware Task Force says there’s no silver bullet to solving the ransomware challenge. Instead, the group touts a multi-pronged approach and provides an extensive list of recommendations to help companies better defend against this growing threat.
While I don’t disagree, for example, that coordinated global action and greater awareness to the severity of this threat are necessary, I couldn’t help but notice a glaring omission from their list: behavioral endpoint detection and response (EDR).
Why aren’t more companies using EDR solutions to combat ransomware?
For our clients, our number one recommendation to prevent or recover from a ransomware attack is to deploy endpoint protection. It’s the closest thing to a ransomware silver bullet you’re going to find — and should be a best practice.
EDR solutions are not based on malicious signatures that ransomers can easily evade. Rather, behavior-based EDR tools search for suspicious patterns of behavior that could indicate malware. And unlike antivirus, they are capable of spotting yet unknown malware, including more sophisticated threats like zero-day attacks; and they combine real-time continuous monitoring with automated analysis and response.
Cost effectiveness of EDR
EDR is not costly, especially considering the potential expense of a ransomware attack. Beyond the ransom payment itself come all the associated attack costs. As Kevin Baker detailed in his “Hidden Costs of Cybercrime” blog, companies must understand that, in the event of an attack, they will be paying for: remediation, repair, restoration of data and IT infrastructure, legal counsel, litigation defense, breach notification, business downtime, reputation damage and lost customer trust, regulatory fines, and increased insurance rates.
Many companies choose to stick with traditional antivirus solutions because they are a slightly less expensive option than EDR. But while EDR may cost more upfront, it’s much more cost-effective in the long run. And too many companies are realizing this after it’s too late, once they’ve been hacked and painfully understand they should have and need to invest more in security.
Ease of deployment and effectiveness
EDR is as quick and easy to deploy as a traditional antivirus solution. Like antivirus, EDR is agent-based, and organizations can automatically install it via a group policy or on an individual basis and, within a day, begin to reap the solution’s benefits.
When Arete’s incident response teams are called on to help victims recover from ransomware attacks — on average, 50 cases per month — this speed and ease of deployment are critical. They immediately deploy EDR technology to contain the attack and provide clients with a clean, safe environment to restore their data and operations.
On top of EDR solutions being intuitive and not requiring a high-level of security expertise, they are incredibly effective, offering functionality far beyond the basic scanning, detection, and “known” malware removal of a traditional antivirus tool. They are designed to protect all endpoints, automatically identify suspicious activity, and mitigate threats in real time. In the case of ransomware, this can mean stopping ransomware encryption, lateral movement, and data exfiltration.
At Arete, we’ve only seen threat actors successfully attack behavior-based EDR systems four times in the past five years. In two of those cases, the client had not fully deployed the EDR solution to all endpoints on the network; in the other two, the client had not protected the EDR management console with two-factor access control, which allowed the attackers to turn off the EDR system.
By comparison, antivirus solutions continue to fall a bit short on effectiveness. Because they are based on pre-populated signatures, attackers can easily evade them with simple changes to their code and sadly, almost all the ransomware victims Arete has worked with have had an antivirus solution in place that failed to detect or block the attack.
If the government can’t solve the ransomware problem, what can I do?
It’s good that the U.S. and international governments are calling for actions to end the ransomware scourge — a threat the director of the FBI has likened to the 9/11 terror attacks. Unfortunately, time is not on anyone’s side.
The daily costs of ongoing ransomware attacks to companies and their clients are too high to wait for possible government action — especially when a cost-effective, near-silver-bullet solution is at hand. If organizations, of any size, want to put ransomware attackers out of business, they should look to deploy behavior-based EDR systems today.
Back to Blog Posts
Article
Arete's 2026 Q1 Crimeware Report
Harness Arete’s unique data and expertise on extortion and ransomware to inform your response to the evolving threat landscape.
Article
CMS Vulnerability Leads to ClickFix Campaign
Threat actors compromised at least 700 education and technology websites in a recent ClickFix campaign by exploiting a critical SQL injection flaw (CVE-2026-26980) in the Ghost content management system (CMS). Adversaries combined the vulnerability with the ClickFix social engineering tactic to steal admin keys and inject a malicious JavaScript that delivers a fake Cloudflare or CAPTCHA verification pop-up, tricking victims into copying and pasting a malicious command into their systems.
What’s Notable and Unique
Rather than targeting the end user first, this campaign is unique in its initial exploitation of the system, followed by social engineering attempts. This hybrid attack style is likely being leveraged to bypass traditional defenses.
This recent campaign also highlights how trusted web properties can be weaponized at scale and coupled with unpatched CMS vulnerabilities. Rather than using the CMS compromise to perpetrate a single attack, threat actors turned it into a supply-chain attack that ultimately affected over 700 trusted websites.
Analyst Comments
As network defenders and their tools enhance threat detection capabilities, adversaries increasingly seek methods to bypass these defenses. By combining vulnerability exploitation, social engineering techniques, and staging for ancillary attacks, this campaign successfully bypassed traditional defenses and inflicted significant impact. Defending against hybrid cyberattacks requires comprehensive security controls beyond simply patching vulnerabilities. Organizations should focus on limiting movement within the environment, detecting abuse of trusted applications, and preventing end-user manipulation.
Sources
700+ education and tech websites hijacked in huge ClickFix malware campaign
Under the engineering hood: Why Malwarebytes chose WordPress as its CMS
Think before you Click(Fix): Analyzing the ClickFix social engineering technique
Ghost CMS Vulnerability Exploited to Infect 700 Sites With ClickFix Malware
Article
Threat Actors Leverage Fake JPEG Files for Initial Access
In a recent campaign, researchers observed threat actors using fake JPEG image files as a delivery mechanism to initiate the deployment of additional malicious components. The false JPEG files are typically distributed via phishing emails or other social engineering-based lures, and are actually PowerShell-based malware that deploys a trojanized version of ConnectWise ScreenConnect to establish and maintain persistence in the compromised environment.
What’s Notable and Unique
This campaign leverages JPEG images as the initial lure, where the images are not merely decoys but part of the infection workflow. Victims are typically led to download or open an image that triggers hidden execution logic or redirects them to a payload-delivery sequence that initiates later stages of the intrusion chain.
The attack chain is designed to blend into legitimate environments, making detection more difficult. Execution typically relies on scripted or native Windows components, often including PowerShell or other living-off-the-land binaries, enabling fileless or near-fileless execution and reducing forensic artifacts on disk.
The multistage design ensures that the initial JPEG does not directly contain the full payload but instead triggers retrieval or decryption steps that progressively assemble the final malicious components in memory.
Analyst Comments
This campaign illustrates how threat actors continue to blur the line between legitimate file handling and malicious execution chains, indicating potential overlap with remote management or administrative tooling. The use of JPEG-based staging combined with script-based execution reflects a broader evolution toward a stealth-first intrusion design, in which file formats serve as triggers rather than payload containers.
Sources
OPERATION SILENTCANVAS : JPEG BASED MULTISTAGE POWERSHELL INTRUSION
Podcast
Cyber Risk and Insurance for Law Firms
In this episode of Bytes of Insight, host Vinny Sakore is joined by Laura Zaroski, Managing Director of the Law Firms Group at Gallagher, as they discuss the evolution of cyber risk for law firms. Tune in for firsthand insights on how to select the right cyber policy, the incident response process, and the nuances of ransom payments and sensitive data.