The global ransomware threat landscape experienced a notable shift, with the number of reported victim organizations dropping to 470-a decline from previous months.
Despite this reduction in raw incident volume, the technical complexity, diversity, and strategic targeting of ransomware attacks continued to evolve, with significant implications for enterprise and critical infrastructure security worldwide.
Fragmented Ecosystem; Silent and Crypto24 Emerge
The Qilin ransomware collective demonstrated clear dominance, accounting for 72 incidents and exhibiting a 71.4% surge in activity compared to March.
This surge secured Qilin’s position as the most active and impactful ransomware group of the period, reflecting a broadening operational scope and enhanced technical capabilities.
At the same time, new entrants such as Silent, Crypto24, Bert, and Gunra registered their presence, collectively accounting for dozens of attacks and signaling heightened competition and innovation within the underground ransomware community.
Silent, an emerging group, has distinguished itself by pursuing a strategy focused on exfiltration of sensitive information rather than mass file encryption, leveraging select data leaks and dark web marketplaces for extortion.
Crypto24, meanwhile, has quickly expanded its footprint, targeting eight confirmed victims worldwide by the time of reporting.
These developments hint at a transition toward more discreet, data-centric extortion models, arguably increasing the challenges faced by defenders in detection and mitigation.
Manufacturing, IT, and Geopolitical Hubs Remain Primary Targets
Industry sector analysis confirmed that manufacturing remained the most targeted vertical in April, followed closely by Information Technology.
The United States experienced the highest concentration of attacks, with 224 documented incidents, while Canada, the UK, Germany, and Italy rounded out the list of top five most targeted countries.
Underpinning this trend is the ransomware groups’ preference for data-rich, operationally critical sectors with high potential for ransom payments or data exploitation.
Notably, attack volumes declined across most industries-with Healthcare, Government, and Consumer Goods registering the steepest drops-while sectors like Materials and Professional Services experienced incremental increases.
According to Cyfirma Report, this shift underscores a potential recalibration of ransomware operators’ targeting models, possibly in response to enhanced sectoral resilience, evolving regulatory pressures, or new monetization strategies.
April also saw the proliferation of advanced ransomware toolkits and novel affiliate models.
Qilin’s rivals, such as DragonForce, have begun to adopt cartel-like structures, providing negotiation platforms, data leak sites, and modular payloads in exchange for revenue sharing, thereby lowering technical barriers for new entrants.
Meanwhile, campaigns leveraging Windows zero-day exploits (notably CVE-2025-29824) and living-off-the-land persistence techniques (e.g., PipeMagic malware and Interlock’s ClickFix attacks) illustrate increasing attacker sophistication and a pivot toward stealthier operations.
The emergence of “white-label” ransomware cartels and the continuous rebranding of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) groups-such as RaLord’s transformation into Nova-pose additional challenges for attribution, tracking, and disruption.
As demonstrated by high-profile attacks on U.S. healthcare and retail giants (Hitachi Vantara, Frederick Health Medical Group, Ahold Delhaize, DaVita), the operational, financial, and reputational impact of these threats continues to mount.
With ransomware operators refining their tactics for persistence, privilege escalation, and data exfiltration, the threat landscape grows more fragmented yet resilient against traditional takedown efforts.
While April 2025 marked a contraction in visible ransomware incidents, the technical ingenuity and organizational adaptability of cybercriminal groups remained undiminished.
The dominance of Qilin and the rapid ascent of Silent and Crypto24 highlight the urgent need for enterprises to adopt a multi-layered defense strategy-encompassing proactive patch management, employee awareness training, robust incident response planning, and continuous threat intelligence monitoring-to mitigate the ongoing risk of ransomware and ensure organizational resilience in an era of escalating cyber threats.
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