Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Ransomware Problem Is a Bitcoin Problem

lawfareblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 183 posts

Re: The Ransomware Problem Is a Bitcoin Problem

#171

Post by jude- »

tptacek wrote: post #74
Dah00n wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be but that doesn't change that fact that the underlying problem isn't cryptocurrency. Lashing out at other technologies because of lack of accountability in software development won't solve anything. At best it will move it somewhere else but in the end the problem stil haven't been solved. Besides, software could absolutely be made much safer without destroying the economy. We all know that the systems tha…

The whole point of the article is that you could have said the same thing about Viagra spam, but financial system interventions did shut that down. There is, again, no evidence that we know how to make commercially deployed software meaningfully safer at the scale we need to do it at to stop ransomware attacks from disrupting society.

I kinda feel like this is something DARPA and the NSF should really be working on. Like, why can't we have an OS and programming environment where it's straightforward to prove basic end-to-end security properties before runtime, like "this data has a `sensitive` type, and thus cannot be written to any potentially-persistent I/O facility?". I'd love it if that was something that my command shell could statically verify for me before running a job, for example.

Re: The Ransomware Problem Is a Bitcoin Problem

#172

Post by rini17 »

tptacek wrote: post #146
rini17 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, Viagra spam was mitigated by making these payments illegal? I have no idea, any source pls?

See: the article we are commenting on.

Oh I'm sorry. But the point still stands, the article is mistaken that it would require arranging money transfers to outside the U.S. With bitcoin in the mix, it is not true anymore. Sure, you can call the bank but unlike Viagra, scammers don't need one fixed account there.

Re: The Ransomware Problem Is a Bitcoin Problem

#173

Post by meowface »

tptacek wrote: post #45
saurik wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

""" While we're at it, maybe those same people can defend the Internet, right? Clearly, this experiment in anyone in the world being able to nigh unto anonymously communicate with anyone else was a mistake... at best, every packet should be tracked back to some regulated endpoint that can be tracked in the real world. The Internet, after all, makes the dark web--and its myriad crimes, including ransomware, drug traff…

You might say you're "banning Bitcoin", but what you're really doing is banning Bitcoin's linkages to the existing institutional financial system. That's a very tenable project.

Tenable, for sure. Effective at preventing companies from finding a way to pay a ransom (where the ransomers know it'll take them additional time to acquire the cryptocurrency funds)? Probably to at least some degree; I'm not sure exactly what the deterrence and enforcement statistics might be like.

But wise or ethical? I'd argue about as wise and ethical as classifying cryptography as munitions. Cryptography in general is certainly more broadly useful than cryptocurrencies, but strong cryptography also enables far more and far worse crimes than cryptocurrencies alone do.

And can you believe there isn't a law preventing US ISPs and network providers from shuttling traffic to or from known Tor nodes? At least 90% of it is obviously used for unethical and/or illegal activity, and it'd be tenable for ISPs to regularly null route public IP addresses they confirm Tor nodes were listening on. Sure, Tor has a few niche use cases like cryptography does, but it so overwhelmingly enables atrocious and criminal activity that it's an injustice no bill has been passed to fight it. Some people could still get around it, and I'm not sure exactly what the deterrence and enforcement statistics might be like, but it'll probably still help to at least some degree.

Governments that shield criminals are the cause here. Go after them rather than the technology the shielded criminals happen to leverage.

Re: The Ransomware Problem Is a Bitcoin Problem

#174

Post by meowface »

Dah00n wrote: post #15
SavantIdiot wrote: post #3

I'd like to hear how cryptocurrency advocates address this without deploying a fallacy. Cryptocurrency makes ransomware possible, without the former, the latter cannot thrive. The defenses I usually hear come in the form of "current banking facilitates bad stuff, too," which is a fact, but doesn't absolve cryptocurrencies central role in ransomware. As the article states, there is simply no way to pay a ransom withou…

I'm not a cryptocurrency advocate but as arberx points out in another comment this is avoiding the real problem. The problem isn't cryptocurrency or ransomware. The root cause is what needs to be fixed: Software publishers and software owners are to blame for insecure systems. Software development is like the wild west with absolutely no accountability. This need to change.

It's one cause, but in my opinion the root here is the fact that ransomers are frequently identified but brazenly don't skip a beat even if they get publicly doxed, because they know they'll face no repercussions. Their governments turn a blind eye as long as the victims aren't citizens of the country or closely allied countries.

Re: The Ransomware Problem Is a Bitcoin Problem

#175

Post by px43 »

grumple wrote: post #115
px43 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those services actually let you send money over the internet. All of them are custodial. You give them your money, they hold onto it, and when they feel like it, they might let you interact with other users within their closed ecosystems.

That is a distinction without a difference and a nonsensical one at that. I have money in my bank account and it goes to someone else’s bank account. The same is true for Bitcoin anyway - you have to use exchanges to get money in/out and you are completely dependent on strangers to process your transactions, and they cost far more. Sure you can have your own wallet but it’s entirely useless until you interact with an…

You've got that backwards, exchanges are only used by people with USD or trying to get USD. The Bitcoin ecosystem did just fine before exchanges existed. I was there. We either mined our own coins, or earned them by doing work for people with coins. It was great.

Also recognize the privilege that you were born with that allows you to open a bank account. About a third of the people in this world don't have that luxury. I've used Bitcoin to pay under-served artists and programmers in corners of the world that I had never heard of, and with many of them I never knew where they were located geographically, because it just doesn't matter anymore.

Re: The Ransomware Problem Is a Bitcoin Problem

#176

Post by AnimalMuppet »

lowkey wrote: post #168
thehappypm wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took a century for USD to swing 99%, how long did it take BTC?

I’m not sure I understand, has BTC ever lost 99% of it’s value? If I understand correctly, the value of Bitcoin has only gone up over the past 11 years. While the purchasing power of the US dollar has fallen in real terms every single one of those years.

Depends on your time frame. It has definitely gone down at times - it's not at 55,000 any more. So "only gone up" might be true, if you pick your sampling intervals in a way that misses all the dips. It's definitely false as an absolute statement, though.

And, to thehappypm's point: Has the US dollar ever lost 30% of its value in a month? No. This point was badly stated (bitcoin has never lost 99% of its value), but I think the point is rather clear: Bitcoin can lose value much more rapidly than the US dollar, and in fact has done so.

Re: The Ransomware Problem Is a Bitcoin Problem

#177

Post by btilly »

I understand that this was flagged because there have been many, many articles on the connection between ransomware and bitcoin.

However this article is not duplicative. It adds the history of exactly how Viagra spammers got shut down, from the perspective of one of the researchers who did it. And the technique by which that happened is a technique that can shut down bitcoin as well.

It is one thing to say, "We have to get rid of cryptocurrency! We're serious!" It is quite another to say, "Here is the method by which a similar past problem was solved." And lay out something that could actually kill the utility of cryptocurrency today. Namely shut down all bank accounts that are willing to exchange large amounts of cash for cryptocurrency. Just as we shut down all bank accounts that were receiving affiliate payments for Viagra spam.

So yes, it is possible to do this. We know how to do this. The question is whether the dangers of ransomware are such that we should do this. Cryptocurrencies have legitimate uses. For example they enable a variety of kinds of smart contracts, which NFTs are but one example of.

However ransomware is a big and growing problem. What happens when a ransomware attack gone bad winds up killing patients in a hospital? Crashes airplanes? Cuts off people's ability to access credit cards or banks?

If we keep seeing random services in a complex world get shut down by ransomware, it is just a question of time until the wrong service gets shut down with disastrous consequences. So far we have had minor inconveniences. But how will people feel after something bigger goes wrong?

Re: The Ransomware Problem Is a Bitcoin Problem

#178

Post by hakfoo »

lowkey wrote: post #169
hakfoo wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "how much value it loses per century" time scale is unimportant for most applications. You need a currency to be "not 1923 Germany", because it becomes impossible to plan for anything past your next meal. But the "loses 100% of the value per century" doesn't really seem to be a hindrance to our real-world financial needs. Lenders are capable of understanding this risk and extending 30+ year mortgages and even tho…

“But the "loses 100% of the value per century" doesn't really seem to be a hindrance to our real-world financial needs. Lenders are capable of understanding this risk and extending 30+ year mortgages and even those weird century-plus infrastructure bond products.” We are going to have to disagree on this point. To me inflation is taxation without representation. It is theft of purchasing power by Central Banks. It di…

>To me inflation is taxation without representation. It is theft of purchasing power by Central Banks.

I guess, in the end, I see central banks as "indirectly representative". While they have some free hand in day-to-day policy, in the end, their leadership has to answer to elected officials. If they drive the economy into a ditch, the head of the Federal Reserve/Bank of England/ECB will get fired.

So the decisions they make aren't much more "taxation without representation" than when the city sanitation department has the authority to adjust the rates for trash collection. Eventually, there's accountability.

>I am less concerned with the needs of lenders to compensate for inflation than I am worried about the disastrous effect it has on those who wish to save for the future.

The point was more that it's already priced in. Inflation doesn't seem to be hindering us from building projects like railroads or semiconductor fabs where the real payback may be many years after the first cheque is written.

As far as I can tell, the primary loser in a managed-slow-inflation scenario is the person who is saving via the "wad of banknotes under the mattress" strategy or similar equally naive choices (i. e. a main-street bank savings account that pays below the inflation rate).

It's not hard to build a very conservative investment portfolio that beats managed competent-Western-central-bank inflation. Hell, you could just buy something like TIPS or Series I savings bonds and be done with.

From that perspective, it's less "robbing savers of purchasing power" and more about converting savers from "dragons sitting on top of a pile of gold" into actual investors participating in the real economy.

Re: The Ransomware Problem Is a Bitcoin Problem

#179

Post by thehappypm »

lowkey wrote: post #168
thehappypm wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took a century for USD to swing 99%, how long did it take BTC?

I’m not sure I understand, has BTC ever lost 99% of it’s value? If I understand correctly, the value of Bitcoin has only gone up over the past 11 years. While the purchasing power of the US dollar has fallen in real terms every single one of those years.

BTC is up 100x from a couple years ago, is that desirable for a currency?

Re: The Ransomware Problem Is a Bitcoin Problem

#180

Post by thehappypm »

fsociety wrote: post #162
thehappypm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much more akin to if a competitor to Ford made a car with a bank-robbing feature.

If Bitcoin had a bank-robbing feature all transactions and wallets would be private. They aren’t.

Which wallets aren’t private?
Post reply on HN