Europe is increasingly being targeted by ransomware groups, driving attacks to unprecedented levels as criminal operations become more industrialised and sophisticated. Threat actors have established themselves in this region as a prime hunting ground, and are now relying on a growing ecosystem of underground marketplaces that sell everything from Malware-as-a-Service subscriptions to stolen network access and turnkey phishing kits to Malware-as-a-Service subscriptions.
New findings from CrowdStrike's 2025 European Threat Landscape Report reveal that nearly 22 per cent of all ransomware and extortion incidents that occurred globally this year have involved European organisations. Accordingly, European organizations are more likely than those in Asia-Pacific to be targeted by cybercriminals than those in North America, placing them second only to North America.
According to these statistics, there is a troubling shift affecting Europe's public and private networks. An increasing threat model is being used by cybercriminals on the continent that makes it easier, cheaper, and quicker to attack their victims. This leaves thousands of victims of attacks increasingly sophisticated and financially motivated across the continent.
Throughout CrowdStrike's latest analysis, a clear picture emerges of just how heavily Europeans have been affected by ransomware and extortion attacks, with the continent managing to absorb over 22% of all global extortion and ransomware attacks.
As stated in the report, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain are the most frequently targeted nations. It also notes that dedicated leak sites linked to European victims have increased by nearly 13% on an annual basis, a trend driven by groups such as Scattered Spider, a group that has shortened its attack-to-deployment window to a mere 24 hours from when the attack started.
According to the study, companies in the manufacturing, professional services, technology, industrial, engineering and retail industries are still the most heavily pursued sectors, as prominent gangs such as Akira, LockBit, RansomHub, INC, Lynx, and Sinobi continue to dominate the landscape, making big game hunting tactics, aimed at high-value enterprises, remain prevalent and have intensified throughout the continent as well.
It has been suggested in the study that because of the wide and lucrative corporate base of Europe, the complex regulatory and legal structure, and the geopolitical motivations of some threat actors, the region is a target for well-funded e-crime operations that are well-resourced. State-aligned threat activity continues to add an element of volatility to the already troubled cyber landscape of Europe.
In the past two years, Russian operators have intensified their operations against Ukraine, combining credential phishing with intelligence gathering and disrupting attacks targeted at the power grid, the government, the military, the energy grid, the telecommunications grid, the utility grid, and so forth. The North Koreans have, at the same time, expanded their reach to Europe, attacking defence, diplomatic, and financial institutions in operations that fuse classic espionage with cryptocurrency theft to finance their strategic projects.
Moreover, Chinese state-sponsored actors have been extorting valuable intellectual property from industries across eleven nations by exploiting cloud environments and software supply chains to siphon intellectual property from the nation that enables them to expand their footprint.
A number of these operations have demonstrated a sustained commitment to biotechnology and healthcare, while Vixen Panda is now considered one of the most persistent threats to European government and defence organisations, emphasising the degree to which state-backed intrusion campaigns are increasing the region's risk of infection.
There has been a dramatic acceleration in the speed at which ransomware attacks are being carried out in Europe, with CrowdStrike noting that groups such as Scattered Spider have reduced their ransomware deployment cycles to unprecedented levels, which has driven up the levels of infection.
Through the group's efforts, the time between an initial intrusion and full encryption has been reduced from 35.5 hours in 2024 to roughly 24 hours by mid-2025, meaning that defenders are likely to have fewer chances to detect or contain intrusions.
Despite being actively under investigation by law enforcement agencies, eCrime actors based in Western countries, like the United States and the United Kingdom, are developing resilient criminal networks despite active scrutiny by law enforcement.
The arrest of four individuals recently by the National Crime Agency in connection with attacks on major retailers, as well as the rearrest of the four individuals for involvement in a breach at Transport for London, underscores the persistence of these groups despite coordinated enforcement efforts.
In addition to this rapid operational tempo, cybercrime has also been transformed into a commodity-driven industry as a result of a thriving underground economy.
The Russian- and English-speaking forums, together with encrypted messaging platforms, offer threat actors the opportunity to exchange access to tools, access points, and operational support with the efficiency of commercial storefronts.
A total of 260 initial access brokers were seen by investigators during the review period, advertising entry points into more than 1,400 European organizations during the review period. This effectively outsourced the initial stages of a breach to outside sources.
Through subscription or affiliate models of malware-as-a-service, companies can offer ready-made loaders, stealers, and financial malware as a service, further lowering the barrier to entry.
It has been noted that even after major disruptions by law enforcement, including the seizure of prominent forums, many operators have continued to trade without interruption, thanks to safe-haven jurisdictions and established networks of trustworthiness.
Aside from eCrime, the report highlights an increasingly complex threat environment caused by state-sponsored actors such as Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
Russian actors are concentrating their efforts on Ukraine, committing credential-phishing attacks, obtaining intelligence, and undertaking destructive activities targeting the military, government, energy, telecommunications, and utility sectors, and simultaneously conducting extensive espionage across NATO member countries.
For the purpose of providing plausible deniability, groups tied to Moscow have conducted extensive phishing campaigns, set up hundreds of spoofed domains, and even recruited "throwaway agents" through Telegram to carry out sabotage operations. As Iranian groups continued to conduct hack-and-leak, phishing, and DDoS attacks, often masking state intent behind hacktivist personas, their hack-and-leak campaigns branched into the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands, and they stepped up their efforts.
With these converging nation-state operations, European institutions have been put under increased strategic pressure, adding an element of geopolitical complexity to an already overloaded cyber-defence environment. It is clear from the findings that for Europe to navigate this escalating threat landscape, a more unified and forward-leaning security posture is urgently needed.
According to experts, traditional perimeter defences and slow incident response models are no longer adequate to deal with actors operating at an industrial speed, due to the rapid pace of technology.
Companies need to share regional intelligence, invest in continuous monitoring, and adopt AI-driven detection capabilities in order to narrow the attackers' widening advantage.
Keeping up with the innovation and sophistication of criminal and state-backed adversaries is a difficult task for any organisation, but for organisations that fail to modernise their defences, they run the risk of being left defenceless in an increasingly unforgiving digital battlefield.
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