Artifi cial Intelligence Enabled Ransomware: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Ransomware has been one of the most severe cyber threats, hobbled operations as well as bottom lines worldwide. Normally, ransomware attacks have been based on the idea of encrypting or blocking the data itself and paying a ransom for it to be released, yet the introduction of AI now also leaves many traditional detection methods out of date. This survey aims to answer three main research questions about how AI-empowered ransomware are growing as a threat: What are these emerging threats, state of-the-art detection methodologies to detect them and what are the related forthcoming research directions? Applying the PRISMA 2020 methodology, the retrieved papers between 2020 and 2025 were systematically reviewed, where only the ones of high quality and focus were included. What’s clear is that AI has turned ransomware from something that was statically built to something that’s now intelligent, work rounding, complex. However, there is hope on the horizon for detecting and defending against such attacks due to the advances in AI-based detection and response systems. In the following, we reflect on remaining challenges identified in the study and the importance of further work to bridge the gap and make AI-based defenses more impactful.