Short BitcoinHeist Topological Data Analysis for Ransomware Detection on the Bitcoin Blockchain cune

Ransomware has been very successful due to three reasons: 1. The cryptographic techniques that the ransomware is using are now freely available in many libraries in many programming languages. 2. Privacy protocols such as Tor are designed to facilitate anonymous communication. 3. Cryptocurrency. When combined, these factors provide a very high level of impunity for ransomware attackers. Only 3% of ransomeware victims were conjectured by Symantec and Dell to pay the ransom, but an academic survey found that almost 40% of the victims paid the ransom to recover their files. This research sought to disclose these ransomware payments from the public Bitcoin transaction network, both to identify ransomware victims automatically and to identify new ransomware families.