Replicating a Study of Ransomware in Germany

Abstract

Ransomware is a pertinent threat to businesses and end user data. While several attacks on enterprises are reported and give insights into the prevalence of such ransomware attacks, this prevalence in the general population is hard to estimate since they are not monitored by an official entity. A 2019 study by Simoiu et al. surveyed a representative sample of American consumers to estimate it for the US population. One year later, we aimed to replicate this effort for a representative German population (N=963) to study the spread of ransomware in a different context. Our findings suggest some differences between the two samples concerning payment methods and the participants’ way of dealing with ransomware. Other aspects, like the ransom amounts and behavioral changes after an attack, were largely similar. We extend prior work by examining disagreements and uncertainty in judging whether a ransomware attack occurred for participants and researchers alike.