Ransomware threat success factors, taxonomy, and countermeasures: A survey and research directions.

•The paper surveys state-of-the-art studies on ransomware analysis, detection, and prediction.•The work describes the enabling technologies and factors that contribute to successful ransomware attacks.•The paper proposes a general taxonomy for the different ransomware types from different perspectives.•The study presents open issues and future research directions on ransomware analysis, detection and prediction.