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The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#131

Post by meowface »

wespiser_2018 wrote: post #128
meowface wrote: post #99

I'm not an unequivocal fan of cryptocurrencies or any particular cryptocurrency by any means, but it appears this author really hates cryptocurrency and this is just an opportunity for them to argue that governments should ban cryptocurrency. Which is completely understandable and obviously in good faith given ransomware is bad and they think cryptocurrencies are bad, but I just wanted to point out their stance and t…

Stephen takes an anti-crypto view and he's not trying to hid it. He's isn't some "hater" that got burnt on a random ICO, but a thoughtful engineer who backs up his opinions with technical, societal, and economic arguments based in part on his own experience in the blockchain space.

I definitely acknowledge all that. I'm not questioning his motives, and I also agree with many of his arguments. I just don't agree with other arguments, or the conclusions, and I don't really understand the tone and ruthless hostility. I wouldn't even really understand it if the topic were just about anything else in the world.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#132

Post by lozf »

rawtxapp wrote: post #59
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…

Yep, if the companies leak our sensitive data, they don't care, business as usual. Ransomware will force companies to finally take this seriously and I, for one, am thankful even if in the short term it's painful.

It's like "Little Bobby Tables" grew up, and is no longer content with just causing a little inconvenience.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#133

Post by alrs »

fredgrott wrote: post #46
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…

why do we need an incentive to break PGP? Let me explain, the basics: Any system that has a case where key collisions can occur less than random is the only incentive you need...large use of bitcoin ensures that case all by itself with the rule that you use a new key for every transaction. LEOs use this track down illicit money. crypto in practical terms is not secure in that the key collision when it occurs and it w…

If you depend on PGP, knowing that there's an incentive to break it, and that people are actively trying to do so is good news. It's in your interest for it to be very well tested. "I can break PGP and spoof Debian packages" is an interesting conference talk. "I can break PGP and save your business $40m in ransomware costs and only charge you $10m" is a business.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#134

Post by sebastien_bois »

TheBill wrote: post #45
sebastien_bois wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not entirely inaccurate. I mean, 20 years, maybe even just 10 years ago we would've shrugged off the type of attacks happening now as "pure science fiction".

30 years ago there was ransomware in the wild: 1989 -Popp/ AIDS trojan 2005 - GPCoder trojan 2017 - notpetya (AKA the moller maersk hack) https://actzero.ai/resources/white-paper/the-rise-of-ransomw...

I was referring more to general attacks, the type that would have seemed too far-fetched decade(s) ago.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#135

Post by tnzm »

mousepilot wrote: post #72
tnzm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy, and not the amygdala-hijacked no-theory-of-minders that rolled in the other day?

I managed to wire up sirc to a perl eliza implementation once. My cobol instructer in community college thought I was a pervert for doing so and in hindsight she was probably right, I think I only ran it once honestly. Nowadays I just run an old eliza in another terminal when I chat on irc and copy and paste between the two terminals, this gets rid of the ethical concerns as there is a human between the interface act…

Yep, you're alright. I like that you talk like a person and not like a copywriter.

The lack of creative (or just non-dogmatic) thinking in this place is something else though. At times it feels like there's no human in the loop, which is disappointing because this is one of the few interesting forums remaining on the whole Internet...

And even here's not immune to waves of people bulldozing over a nuanced conversation by parroting whatever ideological orthodoxy they've had to internalize to be able to successfully signal "lookit me HR I'm normaaaal".

Fitting to mention Eliza - designed to be a shrink simulator IIRC? - sometimes I wish someone developed an AI to make people reflect on their blind spots in the rudest and most efficiently disruptive way possible. Thanks to the magic of AI, the ethical concerns of doing that to someone would vanish into thin air!

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#136

Post by IQunder130 »

alrs wrote: post #19
f38zf5vdt wrote: post #9

Banning cryptocurrency only fixes one side of the global-internet-being-security-broken problem. If you're a nation-state actor and you can still break into computer systems throughout the world, you can still: - Manipulate and profit in foreign stock markets by short/long selling based on insider information - Choose who gets elected by making dirty laundry public - See military planning by the enemy, live, as it ha…

^ ^ ^ If there's any Keanu-pill to swallow, it's this. Intelligence agencies don't "make us safe," they drive financial gain for insiders. I'd bet the ratio of effort spent on "market manipulation" versus "find the evil doers" to be 10:1.

Intelligence agencies exist to gather intelligence about the adversaries of state actors, not "find the evil doers". And being the bloated government agencies that they are I very much doubt they're the hyper-competent market manipulators you imagine them to be.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#137

Post by IQunder130 »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #124

More blaming money for crime. Cryptocurrency is money. Crime will always exist as long as there are laws. Laws will exist as long as there is society. Money will exist as long as there is trade. Society Trade. Stephen once again shouts at the inanimate money or tech to blame it for societies ills. This is a dangerous attitude can lead to cryptography restrictions, like banning of e2e or tor.

It's money that is more difficult to regulate, and easier to conduct illicit transactions with. Rather than debate abstract principles the point of the article is very clearly that fewer practical hurdles to clear -> more people engaging in an activity, given the same incentive.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#138

Post by IQunder130 »

dragontamer wrote: post #67
celestialcheese wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big corporate targets and the >1m ransoms aren't doable with gift cards. A large hospital chain in San Diego[1] last week was hit with a $100m[2] ransomware attack that shut down the hospital. Can't pay that with gift cards. [1] - https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/health/story/2021-... [2] - Source internal said that was the ransom amount

You'd ask for cash. A middleman would pick it up, convert it to gift cards or Tide laundry detergent (so that the traced cash would go cold) and then pass it forward through the criminal network. The middleman needs to be paid because it's high risk (cops would trace the cash to the middleman... but no further). So cryptocoin are way cheaper. But still, there's plenty of ways to do things using old school techniques.

And all of those techniques are orders of magnitude more difficult and risky than simply doing the transaction with crypto.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#139

Post by mousepilot »

tnzm wrote: post #135
mousepilot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I managed to wire up sirc to a perl eliza implementation once. My cobol instructer in community college thought I was a pervert for doing so and in hindsight she was probably right, I think I only ran it once honestly. Nowadays I just run an old eliza in another terminal when I chat on irc and copy and paste between the two terminals, this gets rid of the ethical concerns as there is a human between the interface act…

Yep, you're alright. I like that you talk like a person and not like a copywriter. The lack of creative (or just non-dogmatic) thinking in this place is something else though. At times it feels like there's no human in the loop, which is disappointing because this is one of the few interesting forums remaining on the whole Internet... And even here's not immune to waves of people bulldozing over a nuanced conversatio…

I know what you mean (at least I hope I do), but after getting the boot from reddit (actually just 6 years of karma set to zero to effectively silence me) this place is fantastic by comparison, and I guess I'm new enough to have not been disappointed yet. I suspect that in time you're probably right, and I'll see that lack of mediocre thinking you speak of. The thing I have learned all too late in life is that on the average, people WILL dissapoint, its just that the current population here are such that maybe that disapointment will happen less often.

Any place that inspires me to read more than write will get me hooked everytime tho.

Yes Eliza the shrink, it was meant to be hooked to an irc bot lol.

Re: The Oncoming Ransomware Storm

#140

Post by pja »

meowface wrote: post #112
pja wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just an ad hominem response to Stephen's argument.

It 100% is an ad hominem response. I'm not trying to address his arguments whatsoever and am very low on Graham's hierarchy of disagreement. And again, I do agree with many of his points. I just personally don't think banning cryptocurrencies (or pretty much anything) is the answer, and the very "ban-happy" attitude colors my impression of all of this and makes it less likely that I'd want to attempt to address their…

I guess I’d like to see either a) a genuine engagement with the actual arguments made or b) alternative proposals that make his proposed solution moot.

It seems to me that a strong dislike of the cryptocurrency space is an entirely reasonable & rational position to take at this point in time: the harm done with & by cryptocurrencies is now very obvious - if cryptocurrency boosters can demonstrate positive outcomes that outweigh those harms then they should be easily able to do so.

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