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The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#31

Post by McDyver »

splithalf wrote: post #17
seafoam wrote: post #3

"A future in which ransomware and mass data theft are so ubiquitous they’ve worked their way into our daily lives" >>> True "The singular reason why these attacks are even possible is due entirely to rise of cryptocurrency" >>> False

Incentives matter. Bitcoin incentivizes certain types of criminal activity. As Bitcoin grows the negative externalities will become more pronounced. I truly don’t get the ethics of it. It is killing people, literally blood money as a great new technology. Bonus points for incentivizing climate destruction and burning of fossil fuels. I don’t understand the ethics of it.

Replace "Bitcoin" with "Banks", in your argument.

Doesn't change anything

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#32

Post by duckfang »

My big question, and I would love an answer:

Why is it that an organization can topple to malware and ransomware by some L1 tech clicking on a "bad email"?

People are going to click on shit. That's a 100% guaranteed fact - be it intentional or not. But WHY is our computing and communications paradigm so brittle that any Jack or Jane can click a link and pwn the infrastructure?

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#33

Post by jodrellblank »

tracedddd wrote: post #11

Why are arguments of this form so pervasive? Cryptocurrency is bad and must be banned because ransomware. Encryption is bad because pedos, let’s ban Tor and Signal. We need a permanent surveillance state and forfeit most of our rights to privacy because terrorists bad, what do you have to hide? Is it an appeal to emotion? Fear?

Why are comments in the form of putting words into someone's mouth which they didn't say, so pervasive? The blog says "reign in and regulate", not "ban".

But, to address your point, because they're good arguments. "We need to regulate $thing" has saved lots of lives. No longer can you sell plain river water to drink, dump sewage directly back into rivers, dump industrial waste into rivers, build houses which collapse, build hotels with no fire consideration, build using asbestos, make buildings with electric wiring without circuit breakers, adulterate food with sawdust and plaster, sell products with lead paint, burn leaded gasoline in places where people breathe, and on and on and on.

That's progress; try things, filter out the things which are badder than they are good.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#35

Post by robot_no_419 »

FYI, the author has a huge conflict of interest whenever he writes about cryptocurrency, seeing as he's the founder of Adjoint, Inc, a company which digitizes cash and settlement processes for multinational corporates.

So it's easy to see why he hates a technology that renders his entire company useless.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#36

Post by capableweb »

tracedddd wrote: post #11

Why are arguments of this form so pervasive? Cryptocurrency is bad and must be banned because ransomware. Encryption is bad because pedos, let’s ban Tor and Signal. We need a permanent surveillance state and forfeit most of our rights to privacy because terrorists bad, what do you have to hide? Is it an appeal to emotion? Fear?

It's pretty obvious. Imagine that someone comes to you and shows you a cube. This cube has lightning inside of it, and you can press a button and it creates lightning. This cube can also program software, so if you feed it user stories, it outputs SaaS businesses. You try to understand how this magic lightning works, but to no avail, it's simply too complicated for you to understand.

Your first emotion is most likely fear. Like how the hell does that thing does it, how does it's magic work?

This is how many people see cryptocurrencies. Something "magic" that just somehow is used as money for some people, but it's still just ones-and-zeroes, how does anything make sense?! First reaction is to be careful around it, and try to "protect" yourself from it.

We saw the same thing with the internet initially, until it gradually sucked us all in. We saw the same thing with social media initially, until it gradually sucked most of us in.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#37

Post by scg »

The same shortsighted argument could've been done at various times against cryptography, against torrents, against remote access, against the internet, and against using computers (inherently hackable). Now it's crypto payments, and tomorrow it's going to be something else because criminals use technology to scale as much as everyone else.

Crypto networks are especially good at cross-border payments, and they are hard to censor by a state actor. Indeed, these were among the design constraints of Bitcoin. If one wishes to argue that such a technology shouldn't exist, good luck with that; it exists, has legitimate use cases, and banning outright it is shortsighted in the same way opposing cryptography is shortsighted.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#38

Post by api »

mousepilot wrote: post #15

I remember reading about malware like this some time back. I tried everything I could to prepare but got vetoed at every turn by management. My idea was to do "pull" backups to a server, instead of "push" backups to shares, instead my boss's boss bought some commercial backup package that while ok, when it bombed a t-log chain, they blamed microsoft's implementation of native sql server backups, and of course was now…

"Our firewall blocks everything."

LOL. Firewalls are security theater.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#39

Post by alrs »

api wrote: post #24
alrs wrote: post #5

Ransomware is great. 1. Creates a huge financial incentive to try and break PGP encryption. 2. Pushes aside all of the lame corporate compliance "infosec" people whose job it is get lied to about PCI compliance and bitch about version numbers that they don't understand. 3. Proves useless all of the "ex-special-forces" "red team" "master safecracker" Defcon LARPers. 4. Gives the insurance companies enough room to attr…

Items 2 and 3 will increase massively as people who don't know what they're doing attempt to cover their butts.

a steep climb in the short term that falls off a cliff in the not-so-short-term as those employers cease to exist.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#40

Post by edem »

> Cryptocurrencies are almost entirely used for illicit activity and investment frauds

This made clear that this guy has __no knowledge__ about cryptocurrencies. The article is just bogus.

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