Banning ransoms worked, mostly, for terrorism.
That has to be backed up by a sizable intelligence effort to find and fix the attackers, and a military effort to take them out.
The push to ban ransom payments is gaining momentum
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Re: The push to ban ransom payments is gaining momentum
#52The blackmail part is already illegal, so the criminals wont care one way or another.
It's the victims that would now have two problems: damned if they pay, damned if they dont.
It's not like the criminals will be at any increased risk or effort either. They're criminal operations already doing other criminal stuff, most of the work is automated (via viruses, bots, etc), and they already couldn't take the payments openly (it's not like they used a bank account).
Re: The push to ban ransom payments is gaining momentum
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are the world police implementing this ban? And are they starting a world war to enforce it? Or how does this ban go into effect in your view?
Well we start with say you, you trade some of your bitcoin holdings, the feds seize your winnings, fine you and toss you in prison.
Why start with the person trading bitcoin holdings or any other action for that matter?
Why not just give the police arbitrary power to fine and toss in prison anybody?
Sounds like getting to that with extra steps.
Re: The push to ban ransom payments is gaining momentum
#54I'm ignorant but I've never understood why people actually pay the ransom. Aren't the attackers anonymous? What stops them from asking for another $Y after they get their $X, and not actually removing the ransomware? There's not much incentive for the attackers to actually do what they say after you pay them, right?
Re: The push to ban ransom payments is gaining momentum
#55I'm ignorant but I've never understood why people actually pay the ransom. Aren't the attackers anonymous? What stops them from asking for another $Y after they get their $X, and not actually removing the ransomware? There's not much incentive for the attackers to actually do what they say after you pay them, right?
Extracting future ransoms can rely on their reputation
Re: The push to ban ransom payments is gaining momentum
#56I'm ignorant but I've never understood why people actually pay the ransom. Aren't the attackers anonymous? What stops them from asking for another $Y after they get their $X, and not actually removing the ransomware? There's not much incentive for the attackers to actually do what they say after you pay them, right?
These attackers have made it clear they will release your data. They have done that many many times exactly because they know the target needs to believe they will release it. They even have customer support to help the targets recover everything.
Re: The push to ban ransom payments is gaining momentum
#57I'm ignorant but I've never understood why people actually pay the ransom. Aren't the attackers anonymous? What stops them from asking for another $Y after they get their $X, and not actually removing the ransomware? There's not much incentive for the attackers to actually do what they say after you pay them, right?
As crazy as it sounds, having a reputation to honor the unlocking of data is a great way to get other victims to pay. However, I'd be more suspicious of promises of data deletion.
Re: The push to ban ransom payments is gaining momentum
#58How about a push to mandate 2fa for any entity holding data covered by GDPR or at the very least medical records. The United health care exploit was a password compromise as was the British library. The EPA just released a report saying 70% of the water infrastructure has laughable vulnerabilities like default passwords: https://www.newsweek.com/drinking-water-warning-issued-natio...
Important caveat: "Real" 2FA and not all these cheapo SMS messaging systems.
Re: The push to ban ransom payments is gaining momentum
#59I've seen enough reports of ransomware gangs failing to return their victims files even when they do pay up, that it's probably best to consider those files irrevocably lost and not pay.
Re: The push to ban ransom payments is gaining momentum
#60[flagged]
This would ban legitimate uses only.