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No. The available evidence does not establish that cryptojacking is replacing ransomware as the next major cyber threat. Official sources continue to document ransomware, but they measure it in different ways—and the sources cited here do not provide a comparable cryptojacking time series. That means neither a direct prevalence comparison nor a shift from one crime to the other can be demonstrated from these figures.
How cryptojacking and ransomware differ
These terms describe different criminal objectives. Ransomware actors seek leverage by encrypting data, stealing it, or both, then pressuring victims for payment. Cryptojacking means secretly using a compromised device’s computing resources to mine cryptocurrency. One is commonly associated with extortion; the other with unauthorized resource use.
| Dimension | Ransomware | Cryptojacking |
|---|---|---|
| Apparent objective | Use encryption and/or data theft to pressure a victim for payment. | Covertly use a victim’s computing resources for cryptocurrency mining. |
| Potential victim-facing effect | Access to systems may be interrupted, and stolen data may be exposed. | Unauthorized mining consumes resources and may affect performance, power use, or costs; the sources cited here do not quantify those effects. |
| How activity may be counted | Some reporting tracks public or cybersecurity-company claims; financial reporting captures another subset. | The sources cited here do not provide a matching prevalence count. |
These distinctions explain why the threats should not be treated as interchangeable. They do not, by themselves, show that attackers are abandoning one for the other.
What recent threat reporting says about ransomware
ENISA’s threat-landscape view
The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) identified seven prime cybersecurity threats in its 2024 Threat Landscape. Threats against availability ranked first, followed by ransomware and threats against data. This is ENISA’s analytical ranking of its reporting universe, not a universal count of every attack or a head-to-head ranking against cryptojacking.
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ENISA’s 2025 edition analyses 4,875 incidents observed from 1 July 2024 through 30 June 2025. Its publication page records a revision on 22 September 2026 that corrected figures and links. That observation window and revision date matter: the total describes the incidents ENISA analysed, not all incidents worldwide.
CTIIC’s count of public or reported claims
A February 2025 assessment from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC) counted 5,289 claimed or reported ransomware attacks worldwide in 2024, a 15% increase from 2023. CTIIC had counted 4,591 in 2023, up 77% from 2,593 in 2022.
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CTIIC defines an attack as a claimed or reported event in which actors encrypt or steal data and press victims for payment. Its analysis draws on open-source research and cybersecurity-company information, including leak sites and dark-web forums. CTIIC cautions that these sources “often inflate some ransomware reporting,” and says historical figures can change as collection is refined. The numbers therefore describe reported claims under CTIIC’s method, not a verified census of successful attacks.
FinCEN’s financial-institution reporting
The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) reported that Bank Secrecy Act filings related to 4,194 ransomware incidents and more than $2.1 billion in reported payments across 2022–2024. In the 2024 data, filings reflected 1,476 incidents and $734 million in aggregate reported payments, below the 2023 figures.
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These figures come from financial-institution reporting and describe reported payments, not every ransomware attack or all money paid. FinCEN’s dataset is not interchangeable with CTIIC’s worldwide count of claimed or reported attacks.
Why these figures cannot prove cryptojacking is taking over
The sources measure different things: ENISA analyses a defined set of reported incidents and events; CTIIC counts public or cybersecurity-company reported ransomware claims; and FinCEN analyses ransomware-related financial reporting. None of the sources cited here provides a cryptojacking series for the same period, geography, and collection method.
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Without that like-for-like comparison, the numbers cannot show whether cryptojacking is more prevalent than ransomware, whether it is growing faster, or whether attackers are switching from extortion to mining. The lack of a comparable count is not evidence that cryptojacking is rare. It is a limit on what these statistics can establish.
Broader cybercrime reporting also points to an evolving ecosystem, not a simple one-for-one replacement. Europol’s IOCTA 2025 describes stolen data as a commodity that supports fraud, ransomware, and extortion. Its 2024 IOCTA summary says law-enforcement operations prompted ransomware groups to splinter and rebrand. Those observations are consistent with shifting tactics and fragmented groups, but they do not demonstrate that cryptojacking has displaced ransomware.
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How organizations should use this evidence
For an organization, the practical question is not which headline threat has supposedly replaced the other. It is whether its controls and response plans address the risks it faces. A joint advisory from CISA, the FBI, and the Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre, revised on 4 June 2025 and reflecting investigations as recent as January 2025, recommends these ransomware resilience measures:
- Prioritize remediation of known exploited vulnerabilities.
- Use multifactor authentication (MFA).
- Keep software regularly updated.
- Maintain offline backups.
- Plan and prepare for recovery.
The advisory concerns ransomware. These measures support organizational resilience; they should not be treated as cryptojacking-specific detection or removal guidance.
The same advisory said the FBI knew of approximately 900 entities allegedly exploited by Play actors as of May 2025. That is an actor-specific, provisional figure—not a measure of all ransomware activity—but it illustrates why the threat should not be dismissed on the basis of an unsupported replacement narrative.
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