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The No More Ransom Project

nomoreransom.org

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Re: The No More Ransom Project

#151

Post by logicallee »

stdbrouw wrote: post #37
logicallee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment contains a policy suggestion. I want it to become law in the United States and elsewhere. I can't quite use the word "literally" but I almost can so I'll do so anyway: if you pay a ransom, you are literally paying for your party to attack someone else. And you are actually literally (not metaphorically) funding their next attack. Paying a ransom should be a criminal act that is twenty times worse than as…

If you drive a car you are literally contributing to global warming. If you pay taxes you are literally funding bombs and missiles. If you download big files you are literally taking bandwidth away from your neighbors. Hyperbole does not a rational argument make.

You are not drawing any policy conclusions from your statements.

You state that "if you drive a car you are literally contributing to global warming" which implies the policy statement "if it is illegal to drive a car, contribution to global warming decreases" and use this to imply it's not a rational argument to make it illegal to drive cars.

To your great surprise, I will now state that it is actually already illegal to drive cars, and it actually does have the exact effect that you say is not a rational conclusion:

http://www.dmv.org/articles/what-to-do-if-your-car-fails-an-...

Today, today, it is literally illegal to drive a car....which doesn't meet EPA standards! As a direct effect, people do not buy and drive cars which fail emissions standards.

So, yes, the exact policy suggestion that you don't go quite as far as to argue for actually is being enforced and actually demonstrably has the exact effect that you (only imply) doesn't happen.

Since you don't even imply any policy conclusions for the other two points I can't address them, I have no idea why you would mention them.

(If the government made it illegal to collect or pay taxes, obviously its tax base would evaporate overnight, this goes without saying, nobody would illegally pay money to the government out of civic duty despite its now being illegal to do so.)

Re: The No More Ransom Project

#152

Post by logicallee »

21 wrote: post #145
tgb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone down voting this should read Thomas Schilling's Strategy of Conflict. At one point in time in England it was punishable by death to pay ransom to pirates.

Yet the modern world decided to go back on that. The principle being that you are not (as) responsible for what you do under duress.

This is a good and important point. However is data ransom this kind of duress?

In a sense, paying a ransom is taking the law into your own hands -- rather than say to the FBI, "criminals have asked me for ransom" you are interacting with the criminals directly.

On a literal level you are literally transferring cold hard cash to them.

You make a good argument for why the policy suggestion I made is not a good idea, but I am not entirely convinced by it. As a rule it is not a good idea to engage in vigilante behavior.

Lawmakers and judges would have to use their discretion here and come up with quite nuanced laws.

Re: The No More Ransom Project

#153

Post by logicallee »

bubo_bubo wrote: post #38
logicallee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment contains a policy suggestion. I want it to become law in the United States and elsewhere. I can't quite use the word "literally" but I almost can so I'll do so anyway: if you pay a ransom, you are literally paying for your party to attack someone else. And you are actually literally (not metaphorically) funding their next attack. Paying a ransom should be a criminal act that is twenty times worse than as…

Knowingly buying stolen goods is illegal because they are still not yours even if you 'bought' them. Paying a ransom to get your own property back because it is yours is not even in the same ballpark.

we'll agree to disagree on whether it's in the same ballpark. I see the difference you point out, sure.

Re: The No More Ransom Project

#154

Post by XaYdEk »

dsacco wrote: post #62
CalChris wrote: post #31

So this is what a ransom note looks like: https://d1b10bmlvqabco.cloudfront.net/attach/is23h8nx8ff3jw/... Short, blunt, helpful, clear. Pretty much what you'd like every memo you've ever gotten to be. Me, I'm a huge fan of ransom notes and Nigerian scam emails. We can learn a lot from them. I'm pretty sure that when you get one of these that you're dealing with a script. You pay .65880 BTC into its wallet, period. Th…

Good comment. I've interacted with ransomware scammers on several occasions. Each time I couldn't help but be impressed by their operations. In one case, the scammers provided an email address for customer support once the victim paid the ransom. They were courteous, helpful and professional - more so than many customer response teams I've had to interact with in legitimate companies. To be clear, I also don't recomm…

Ah, reality is an infinite source of irony.

Re: The No More Ransom Project

#155

Post by babuskov »

samstave wrote: post #47
babuskov wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe try lynx? Or just use VPS when surfing the web.

Or surf from a VM on your machine. I used to do this on linux, as I had copies of my windows VM and I would just browse from the windows box on another screen and then work from the linux one on the main screen

Yes! I meant VM. I was just setting up some VPS and mistyped it.

Re: The No More Ransom Project

#156

Post by shoghicp »

edem wrote: post #141

How can a ransomware infect my computer when I visit a website? This site claims it can happen. I understand how the attachment version works but not this one. I'm a security newb.

Some websites can use security vulnerabilities in different parts of the browser (rendering, image format parsers, Javascript, PDF, fonts, and everything else supported by the browser) to run code on your machine.

Re: The No More Ransom Project

#160

Post by Houshalter »

pmoriarty wrote: post #86
CalChris wrote: post #31

So this is what a ransom note looks like: https://d1b10bmlvqabco.cloudfront.net/attach/is23h8nx8ff3jw/... Short, blunt, helpful, clear. Pretty much what you'd like every memo you've ever gotten to be. Me, I'm a huge fan of ransom notes and Nigerian scam emails. We can learn a lot from them. I'm pretty sure that when you get one of these that you're dealing with a script. You pay .65880 BTC into its wallet, period. Th…

"If it gets out that you paid and you didn't get unlocked then no one would pay." Sounds like an easy way to get rid of ransomware. Just spread rumors that you didn't get your files back even though you paid. Somehow I have a feeling that wouldn't work, though. Many people would still pay.

How will that get rid of ransomware? It might reduce their profits, but as long as even 1℅ of people pay up, they make enough to keep doing it.
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