US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat • Hacker News Board

Re: US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat

#111

Post by walrus01 » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

momokoko wrote: post #92

Let this be a lesson to those that say bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has no real value outside of speculation. This kind of attack would be almost impossible in the pre-bitcoin era. The difficulty of receiving that volume of money in that short of a period of time in a difficult to trace manner is a new thing. We are entering a new era where crime can pay in very large sums with orders of magnitude less complexity…

An interesting technical and financial challenge is how they intend to launder and tumble the Bitcoin and eventually turn it into fiat currency. The open nature of the block chain means that third parties can and will track all transactions related to the wallet(s) that received the 4.5m.

Re: US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat

#112

Post by tootie » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

nlh wrote: post #19

For some context about CWT (I was curious about these figures) -- via Wikipedia[1]: * US$1.5 billion in revenue * 18k employees For a firm like this, the payment probably amounts to a small uptick in a small portion of their IT budget and won't even come close to hurting them (and, frankly, neither would the $10m figure). It's insane that this is the case and that companies are willing & able to pay ransoms like this…

It doesn't matter how big your company is, every penny still gets counted. This will come out of some department's budget and have an adverse impact on operations or even cost them some employees. Hopefully whoever was auditing their security.

Re: US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat

#113

Post by yzmtf2008 » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:09 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #108

yzmtf2008 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "However I see a huge difference between protecting human lives versus protecting corporate assets." The idea that there are fundamental differences between human lives and corporate assets is flawed. There's a very specific value of human life: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/835571843

> Wrong They said they saw a difference. They didn’t say other people didn’t see a difference.

>"They said they saw a difference."

Which would be the point, that there are no fundamental differences between corporate assets and human lives.

Re: US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat

#114

Post by chrisseaton » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:09 AM UTC

RangerScience wrote: post #105

chrisseaton wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> n a difficult to trace manner is a new thing I still don’t understand - how is Bitcoin difficult to trace when there is a global immutable public record of all transactions?

1) You need to be able to tie a BTC address to a human 2) Mixers

Do you not tie yourself to your Bitcoin when you try to use it for something physical like turning it into cash or buying a physical asset?

Can you not track all Bitcoins going in and out of a mixer?

Re: US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat

#115

Post by seebetter » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:10 AM UTC

momokoko wrote: post #92

Let this be a lesson to those that say bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has no real value outside of speculation. This kind of attack would be almost impossible in the pre-bitcoin era. The difficulty of receiving that volume of money in that short of a period of time in a difficult to trace manner is a new thing. We are entering a new era where crime can pay in very large sums with orders of magnitude less complexity…

Something like 95%+ of bitcoin is related to financial speculation, investing, DeFi etc etc.

An order of magnitude of more drugs are sold on Cash App and Venmo -- which is why they're in rap songs. As for large scale hacking, extortion and ransom, yes bitcoin is used but it is increasing difficult to cash out in a large way.

Re: US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat

#116

Post by bibstha » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:10 AM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #6

Maybe I just don't understand either the ThreadReader or Reuters article, but I couldn't find a transcript of the chat linked anywhere? Does anyone else know where it is?

Something to do with Firefox. The images load fine in Chrome.

Re: US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat

#117

Post by seebetter » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:10 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #109

momokoko wrote: post #92

Let this be a lesson to those that say bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has no real value outside of speculation. This kind of attack would be almost impossible in the pre-bitcoin era. The difficulty of receiving that volume of money in that short of a period of time in a difficult to trace manner is a new thing. We are entering a new era where crime can pay in very large sums with orders of magnitude less complexity…

Also, laundering is now super easy.

Trade based money laundering is like 100x cryptocurrencies.

Re: US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat

#118

Post by foobiekr » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:10 AM UTC

hellotomyrars wrote: post #40

While these stories are becoming all too common I’d like to think that while we’re in a golden age of being a ransomware payouts, it will lead to actually caring about security by many of the high-profile affected companies. While the overall cost may be low for them, if they don’t make meaningful changes to prevent these issues in the future, it’s not hard to imagine it might add up quickly. I don’t support these at…

The people releasing terrible software (that has a default-open admin port with no login credentials and no filtering, as just one of many examples) are not usually the ones who end up paying the ransoms.

Re: US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat

#119

Post by dmead » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:11 AM UTC

momokoko wrote: post #92

Let this be a lesson to those that say bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has no real value outside of speculation. This kind of attack would be almost impossible in the pre-bitcoin era. The difficulty of receiving that volume of money in that short of a period of time in a difficult to trace manner is a new thing. We are entering a new era where crime can pay in very large sums with orders of magnitude less complexity…

my understanding of bitcoin is that it's just used to back the drug trade.

the recent price spike, as all other price spikes are the result of some (probably) nefarious activity that pumps real dollars in and out of the bitcoin platform.

Re: US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat

#120

Post by yyyk » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:11 AM UTC

momokoko wrote: post #92

Let this be a lesson to those that say bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has no real value outside of speculation. This kind of attack would be almost impossible in the pre-bitcoin era. The difficulty of receiving that volume of money in that short of a period of time in a difficult to trace manner is a new thing. We are entering a new era where crime can pay in very large sums with orders of magnitude less complexity…

>Let this be a lesson to those that say bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has no real value outside of speculation.

>This kind of attack would be almost impossible in the pre-bitcoin era.... Instead democratizing currency, we're democratizing large scale crime.

Just wanted to make this same point - right now, cryptocurrency has negative value for society. Perhaps this is a justification for banning the current implementations.