Microsoft's security team has issued an advisory today warning organizations around the globe to deploy protections against a new strain of ransomware that has been in the wild over the past two months.
"PonyFinal is a Java-based ransomware that is deployed in human-operated ransomware attacks,"
Microsoft said in a series of tweets published today.
Human-operated ransomware is a subsection of the ransomware category. In human-operated ransomware attacks, hackers breach corporate networks and deploy the ransomware themselves.
This is in opposition to classic ransomware attacks that have been seen in the past, such as ransomware distributed via email spam or exploit kits, where the infection process relies on tricking the users in launching the payload.