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U.S. Senate to probe whether legislation needed to combat cyber attacks

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. Senate to probe whether legislation needed to combat cyber attacks

#41

Post by _hyn3 »

d4mi3n wrote: post #33
sida wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean cryptocurrency is indeed what made ransomware possible.

I'd argue they make it less risky . Ransomeware has been around since the 90s, just not nearly as prevalent as it was harder to do without getting caught. They could easily instead demand somebody mail cash/money order to an abandoned address or mail forwarding service.

Or just like those offshore scammers who have a million different avenues (like gift card numbers), or just a wire transfer to an offshore account.

Re: U.S. Senate to probe whether legislation needed to combat cyber attacks

#42

Post by Agathos »

russian-hacker wrote: post #35
bpodgursky wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would just give CEOs who want to do the right thing (and not pay) legal cover to tell the board of directors "Nope, not paying — the company is going to be shut down for a month. Deal with it, I'm not going to jail."

And it would give CEOs who want to do the wrong thing an avenue to destroy competitors under the table.

You could always hire a bunch of shadowrunners to destroy your competitor's computer system, but I don't know what that has to do with ransomware.

But hey, I guess you could use cryptocurrency to pay the runners.

Re: U.S. Senate to probe whether legislation needed to combat cyber attacks

#43

Post by colinmhayes »

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #21

An unconventional approach could be to make it a severely penalized, strictly enforced, federal crime to pay ransom. (Of course, a year or so pre-warning of this kind of law would be required to allow for companies to lock their data down.)

If the colonial pipeline hadn't paid the ransom there would be pandemonium on the east coast as people were forced to ration gas. I don't see how that helps. As long as computers exist they will be hacked. Spending more on security can help but can't stop it.

Re: U.S. Senate to probe whether legislation needed to combat cyber attacks

#44

Post by kragen »

convolvatron wrote: post #2

reverse the terrible ITAR legacy fund foundational security and mandate its use by government agencies and suppliers

Agreed. I wrote about this last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27389993

In reality, though, the Continental attack is likely to provoke a reaction as counterproductive as the reaction to 9/11 was.

Re: U.S. Senate to probe whether legislation needed to combat cyber attacks

#45

Post by arminiusreturns »

akomtu wrote: post #11

Translating to plain language: bureocrats are evaluating the possibility to ban encryption and cryptocurrencies under the veil of combating cyber attacks.

Correction: bureaucrats plan to let K-street write some legislation they dont even read but vote for because rider number 57 is for donor number 5, while the staffers who do the actual work will quietly grease the wheels so they can go work on K-street and make 4 times as much a few years down the road.

What Im getting at is we have a fundamentally broken legislative branch, and until that is fixed, nothing addressed via legislation will be uncorrupted by it.

Re: U.S. Senate to probe whether legislation needed to combat cyber attacks

#46

Post by Agathos »

d4mi3n wrote: post #33
sida wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean cryptocurrency is indeed what made ransomware possible.

I'd argue they make it less risky . Ransomeware has been around since the 90s, just not nearly as prevalent as it was harder to do without getting caught. They could easily instead demand somebody mail cash/money order to an abandoned address or mail forwarding service.

Not that "easily." Moving that much cash around requires a lot of manual effort and some skill at money laundering.

By removing that need, cryptocurrency makes ransomware scalable. And as Paul Graham and other Silicon Valley types have said a thousand times, scalability is the difference between a modest mom-and-pop operation and a rapidly growing enterprise.

Re: U.S. Senate to probe whether legislation needed to combat cyber attacks

#47

Post by AaronFriel »

colinmhayes wrote: post #43
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #21

An unconventional approach could be to make it a severely penalized, strictly enforced, federal crime to pay ransom. (Of course, a year or so pre-warning of this kind of law would be required to allow for companies to lock their data down.)

If the colonial pipeline hadn't paid the ransom there would be pandemonium on the east coast as people were forced to ration gas. I don't see how that helps. As long as computers exist they will be hacked. Spending more on security can help but can't stop it.

Colonial Pipeline ended up restoring data using their own backups anyway. They paid $5 million dollars for a decryption tool that was so slow that their own IT team was able to restore service sooner.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-13/colonial-...

Re: U.S. Senate to probe whether legislation needed to combat cyber attacks

#48

Post by [deleted] »

russian-hacker wrote: post #40
giaour wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it already extremely difficult to know whether you’re committing a felony by paying a ransom? You’re sending millions of dollars in bitcoins to an unidentified group of known felons; if they are (or are affiliated with) a group dedicated to the violent overthrow of a government, then congratulations, you’ve just provided material support to a terrorist organization. The US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Cont…

No different to paying your US taxes to fund the same thing.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. Senate to probe whether legislation needed to combat cyber attacks

#49

Post by dmfb »

giaour wrote: post #36
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #21

An unconventional approach could be to make it a severely penalized, strictly enforced, federal crime to pay ransom. (Of course, a year or so pre-warning of this kind of law would be required to allow for companies to lock their data down.)

Isn’t it already extremely difficult to know whether you’re committing a felony by paying a ransom? You’re sending millions of dollars in bitcoins to an unidentified group of known felons; if they are (or are affiliated with) a group dedicated to the violent overthrow of a government, then congratulations, you’ve just provided material support to a terrorist organization. The US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Cont…

“The [US government] is the world’s biggest terrorist organization.” –Noam Chomsky

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vRbnPA3fd5U

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