{"id":215034,"date":"2026-02-18T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/18\/record-number-of-ransomware-victims-and-groups-in-2025\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T17:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T22:10:13","slug":"record-number-of-ransomware-victims-and-groups-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/18\/record-number-of-ransomware-victims-and-groups-in-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Record Number of Ransomware Victims and Groups in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record Number of Ransomware Victims and Groups in 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.infosecurity-magazine.com\/news\/record-number-ransomware-victims\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-02-18 06:30:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.infosecurity-magazine.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Security researchers observed a 30% annual increase in ransomware victims listed on extortion sites last year, with AI helping to lower the barrier to entry for new threat groups.<\/p>\n

Searchlight Cyber’s\u00a0new report, Ransomware\u2019s Record Year: Tracking a Volatile Landscape in H2 2025, tracked 7458 victims on dark web leak sites in 2025.<\/p>\n

These numbers were split virtually 50:50 between the first and second half of the year. To put the annual growth figure in perspective, victim numbers increased by just 13% between 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the number of ransomware groups hit a new high of 124, with 73 new groups identified in 2025.<\/p>\n

Although Searchlight Cyber describes these as \u201crecord\u201d highs, it has only been tracking the market since 2023.<\/p>\n

Read more on ransomware: Active Ransomware Groups Surge by 56% in 2024.<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen whether these victim numbers translate into a bigger windfall for threat actors.<\/p>\n

Chainalysis data for 2024 revealed that payments to ransomware groups fell 35% annually in 2024 as victims increasingly refused to cave in to extortionists\u2019 demands. That\u2019s despite an increase in reported ransomware \u201cevents.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely that this general trend changed in 2025.<\/p>\n

AI as a Force Multiplier<\/strong><\/h2>\n

That said, there are signs that technological advances are helping adversaries.<\/p>\n

Searchlight Cyber claimed that AI is already lowering the barrier to entry for non-specialist groups, by assisting with social engineering, analysis of exfiltrated data, and even ransomware negotiations.<\/p>\n

The coders behind the main variants are also using AI tools to refine and adapt their code in order to bypass security defenses, the report claimed.<\/p>\n

Searchlight Cyber explained that the main causes of ransomware breaches which organizations must focus on are:<\/p>\n