Abstract
Malware proliferation and sophistication has drastically increased and evolved continuously. Recent indiscriminate ransomware victimizations have imposed critical needs of effective detection techniques to prevent damages. This form of malware has drawn attention among cyberspace researchers. This paper contributes a comprehensive overview of ransomware attacks and summarizes existing detection and prevention techniques in the Windows platform. Additionally, it highlights the strengths and shortcomings of those techniques as well as current challenges. Then, aiming to educate, it gives recommendations to users and system administrators.