With $20,000 one could get a really nice backup system.
I see you backed up your comment
University pays $20,000 to ransomware hackers
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Re: University pays $20,000 to ransomware hackers
#12The headline could also be "University willingly supports criminals with $20.000" - and it would be more honest. That's really something that bothers me with the whole ransomware thing: People seem to be completely ignorant to the fact that by paying they're not only getting back their data - they're paying the bills for the people who will launch more attacks against other people. And thus they're themselve guilty o…
... under duress.
That's why it's termed 'ransom'. Because people who don't pay, have things taken from them. You don't really get to condemn ransom payers on ethical grounds without being an asshole.
Re: University pays $20,000 to ransomware hackers
#13If you're a Windows programmer, might be a good idea to write a Windows Service that watches for drive encryption. Then you could stop it before it does anything. For now, I think most of the methods are known, so they are easy to watch for.
That's the sort of thing that should already exist in anti-virus software or host intrusion detection systems. I presume that the university wasn't running such software, or that it didn't work correctly, or that the ransomware was smart enough to bypass it.
Re: University pays $20,000 to ransomware hackers
#14Ranked 151-200 in the QS rankings for CS. I bet if they handed this problem over to the CS people in the university they would have willingly helped them out to fix it.
Information security is even listed as one of their main research areas.
http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/cpsc_research
they even have some labs that does infosec
http://icis.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/ http://ispia.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/
I bet the people at the CS dept must be pissed.
Re: University pays $20,000 to ransomware hackers
#15Why openly announce that you're paying the ransom? Here's some major disadvantages that I can think of: 1. Announces to world that you have poor security/backup practices which encourages more attacks against you 2. Announces to world that making and distributing ransomware is good business which encourages more attacks against everyone I understand that public institutions needs financial transparency in order to be…
> Why openly announce that you're paying the ransom?
An effective thing they could have done is to announce that they paid the ransom, but that the decryption did not work (even though it did).
That has the advantage of discouraging other people from paying up, and therefore reduces the incentive to create more ransomware attacks.
Hell, the government could step in and recruit people and companies to falsely claim that they were ransomware victims who paid up, but never got decryption keys and were screwed over. That could put a damper on ransomware psychology.
Thinking about it further however, this will probably lead to better "customer service" by the ransomware makers. They'll adapt their software to selectively decrypt part of your data for free, so they can offer you proof that that they can and will give your working keys once you pay up.
Re: University pays $20,000 to ransomware hackers
#16Re: University pays $20,000 to ransomware hackers
#17The most interesting part of the article was that some ransomware sites have threatened to publish their files if they don't pay - no backup strategy will save you there.
Re: University pays $20,000 to ransomware hackers
#18Why openly announce that you're paying the ransom? Here's some major disadvantages that I can think of: 1. Announces to world that you have poor security/backup practices which encourages more attacks against you 2. Announces to world that making and distributing ransomware is good business which encourages more attacks against everyone I understand that public institutions needs financial transparency in order to be…
Raise public awareness?
That can do some good in the long term. It will eventually get operating system vendors to enforce much stricter security measures by default that perhaps they wouldn't have considered otherwise or anytime soon, because they would "break legacy code" or whatever.
It's also good that this is coming at a time before the rise of self-driving cars. Because the vast majority of car makers seem to know nothing about security, yet are eagerly jumping head first into always-connected, self-updating and digital-first self-driving cars. I'm guessing people are going to raise hell when ransomware arrives for their cars. And I think the car makers will be "shocked" (shocked, I tell you), that this will be happening, and will say something dumb like "Nobody could have ever predicted this! - it's why we never implemented good security in the first place."
However, because the OS/hardware vendors are only going to be dragged kicking and screaming into implementing stricter security measures, it's going to be a while before stricter security arrives.
In the meantime, beyond alerting criminals that ransomware is big business, it will probably also be used as an excuse to pass more CISA-like surveillance laws (which will do absolutely nothing to stop the rise of ransomware).
It could also be used as yet another excuse to end strong crypto (because obviously ransomware uses crypo). But of course, it's not like the Russian or Chinese criminals doing this are going to care that the US has a ban on strong crypto. So yet again a solution that does nothing to stop the rise of ransomware, but would still make it much worse for all of us, and it could even be a step back in the fight against ransomware.
Re: University pays $20,000 to ransomware hackers
#19Microsoft really needs to build ransomware behavior detection directly into Windows. The behavior of these programs is quite distinctive. The advent of cryptocurrency was the missing link to enable all manner of anonymous extortion schemes, and this one in particular seems to now be a mainstream threat. Microsoft should be all over this.