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A federal ban on paying ransomeware would reduce the incentive to commit these attacks.
It would cause companies to pay secretly and illegally instead, something which cryptocurrencies enable. Ban cryptocurrencies. They are the cause of the ransomware epidemic.
In what world does a ban on paying ransoms get wantonly evaded while a ban on cryptocurrencies does not?
A federal ban on paying ransomeware would reduce the incentive to commit these attacks.
It would cause companies to pay secretly and illegally instead, something which cryptocurrencies enable. Ban cryptocurrencies. They are the cause of the ransomware epidemic.
A federal ban on paying ransomeware would reduce the incentive to commit these attacks.
I have to wonder: Are there CTOs or IT heads going into board meetings or other meetings, and telling people that these systems are secure? Because if so, they need to be tried for fraud. If it's on the internet, it is not secure.
It's not the IT workers saying that their secure, it's us telling the business that we need X dollars to mitigate risk of Y. And then the accounting people are like "But it hasn't happened yet, why would we pay to prevent something that hasn't happened yet!???"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So your solution to transient disruptions in availability is to make your services permanently unavailable?
Services can be available, and not reliant on internet connected services. Imagine if all the hacks we've seen in the last year happened all at once. We'd be screwed.
I agree that things should be kept off the internet unless they absolutely need to be there, but realistically companies need to have internet connected services to be able to do business.
Time to ban bitcoin. https://newrepublic.com/article/162589/ban-bitcoin-cryptocur...
Isn't this like banning cash to stop muggings?
By "Ban" I mean they no longer make them, and possibly destroy them once they get circulated back to the central bank. They're still legal tender.
See also 500 euro note... (edited to clarify "ban" meaning)
A federal ban on paying ransomeware would reduce the incentive to commit these attacks.
Unencrypting for vicitims in the US that couldn't pay would just add more exposure risk to them of getting caught, so they would have no incentive to actually do it. It would take a large bit of money out of the system, but it seems like you need all countries to coordinate and that one country doing so on its own, enforcing a no pay out rule, won't have much effect on non-targeted attacks.
How many of these attacks are fully automated in the initial attack/encrypt phase vs. human operators explicitly working to more fully infiltrate a target?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Services can be available, and not reliant on internet connected services. Imagine if all the hacks we've seen in the last year happened all at once. We'd be screwed.
How are you going to sell customers tickets remotely without an internet presence? How are you going to field customer service complaints or general inquiries without email? How are your employees going to do work at multiple sites without VPNs? If you pitch "lets do everything by phone" you will be laughed out of the room. I agree that things should be kept off the internet unless they absolutely need to be there, b…
I'm not sure a perfect solution, but the standard of living was pretty good before the internet. Doing away with reliance on infrastructure for critical things like food processing, energy, and transit does not seem like a high price to pay to avoid a Thanksgiving turkey conundrum.
All these services are going to go unhacked, until they're hacked. And it's a complete skewed problem. We get minor conveniences for having them online. We suffer massively when they go offline.
A federal ban on paying ransomeware would reduce the incentive to commit these attacks.
Would it? For some businesses, the reality is going to be that paying is necessary to continue to exist. What happens when that option, as crappy as it is, is off the table?
Insurance. Back-ups. Bail outs. Go out of business. That ransom paid has negative externalities that manifest nationally.
Sure, whitelisting is annoying to say the least, but these are critical systems, you don't need to install new software daily or even monthly.