131–140 of 233 posts
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Bomb their families instead?
If victims need to be consistent. When terrorists are shown that they'll either get a bomb through the roof or nothing, but never payment, then they'll change their business plan.
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If victims need to be consistent. When terrorists are shown that they'll either get a bomb through the roof or nothing, but never payment, then they'll change their business plan.
The goal of most contemporary terrorist is not personal enrichment.
It seems like the largest threat to the "ransom seeking industry" is for the public to come to believe that paying the the ransom will do no good. Sometimes, such as in cases like this, it becomes publicly known that a ransom is sought before it is paid. An interesting aspect of a Bitcoin ransom is that third parties can verify that a ransom was paid. Would it be in the legitimate interest of the public as a whole fo…
Huh, interesting. If third parties have attackers' bitcoin address, they can also pay the ransom themselves.
No evidence given for it, but my first thought was to wonder is it was a government not liking ProtonMail's encrypted email service,and taking them down.
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From their blog: https://protonmaildotcom.wordpress.com/ At around 2PM, the attackers began directly attacking the infrastructure of our upstream providers and the datacenter itself. The coordinated assault on our ISP exceeded 100Gbps and attacked not only the datacenter, but also routers in Zurich, Frankfurt, and other locations where our ISP has nodes. This coordinated assault on key infrastructure eventually manag…
They put their customers in charge of the company? This gets weirder all the time. The problem is that they asked their customers in the first place. They should have simply communicated the fact that they would be under attack shortly and indicate that they would never ever pay a red cent . That would give their customers time to batten the hatches and/or migrate off the system for the time being while sending a cle…
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation To call upon a neighbour and to say: -- "We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight, Unless you pay us cash to go away." And that is called asking for Dane-geld, And the people who ask it explain That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld And then you'll get rid of the Dane! It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look impo…
I guess Kipling's knowledge of this had a practical basis, since he was one of the chief apologists for the systematic extortion the British Empire used to enrich itself.
I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times but it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars. That was pretty amazing.
By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable, but a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits - rule of law, economic infrastructure, transport networks etc. Being invaded (not just plundered) by major cultures has generally had good benefits - in the long term - for the invaded nation as they get a lot of the characteristics of the stronger nation.
Again, keep in mind that this is not the modern way of looking at things, which is why we have the United Nations and other international organizations.
I belong to a minority community in Pakistan target of regular state backed oppression.In addition to violence and flagrant discrimination the community representatives are also targets for abductions. The community has a rule.It never pays ransom to the kidnappers because this sets a precedent and exposes the representatives all over the country to even more kidnappings. This strategy while it may seem brutal is a n…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If victims need to be consistent. When terrorists are shown that they'll either get a bomb through the roof or nothing, but never payment, then they'll change their business plan.
The goal of most contemporary terrorist is not personal enrichment.
See http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20about%20Terror#t... and http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20Effective
NEVER EVER PAY RANSOM MONEY. Please. Even if your business will suffer it will suffer a lot more if you do pay since now it is known you'll cave. Also: you are making the problem larger for others.
What's your opinion on settling bogus litigation?
I've been in that position (twice) and in both cases was able to reverse tables on my opponent. It could be that I'm lucky but I think that these operations only work because there are a lot of people that cave in when they see a letter on a lawyers letterhead regardless of the merit.