This isn't a ransomware attack, they're not encrypting the company's drives and demanding a ransom to unencrypt them. Not every "I hacked you now pay me or bad things happen" situation is ransomware.
> Ransomware is a type of malware from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim's data or perpetually block access to it unless a ransom is paid.
There is nothing being returned here, since the hospital has not lost access to the data, and the threat is that private data will be published.
This is just blackmail.
What is it then, if you don't have the legal right to the data?
It's not like we need the law to explicitly allow types of access. Anything not explicitly disallowed is allowed without a special name.
"Stealing" happens when the original owner is deprived of the thing.
Both "hacking" and stealing are illegal in most countries, but they're still completely different actions: one is taking a physical object from someone, the other is sending and receiving electrical pulses trough a wire.
You wouldn't call stealing and killing by the same word, either, even though both are illegal.
Seriously. Theft requires the property owner be denied their property.
What happened is someone made a copy they were not supposed to.
Textbook infringement.
What makes "stealing" particularly bad is that the rightful owner no longer has possession of their property. That's not necessarily the case with data.
In digital, information wants to be free and many kinds of resources are effectively unlimited. There is no material scarcity. Therefore, theft, in the digital world, can't be the same as it is in our analog world.
To be fair, this also applies to copyright and peoples' foolish notion that they can protect data without a great amount of preventing otherwise normal "physiological" processes. (Ironically, rather than having a wake-up moment where people realize their folly, we've institutionalized these resource-scarcity regimes into resource-abundant versions in the digital world)
To summarize, info wants to be free, and since theft requires extra effort to deprive someone of what you stole, does that definition of theft really apply here? Or does it need to change given the context? And, as a secondary point, people like to think they can protect data but their brains are stuck in our analog, resource-scarce world
I think in a way, ransomware authors are following the "free market" approach, trying to best monetise their unauthorised access to other people's IT systems. Perhaps the prevalence of ransomware will eventually help businesses to properly cost in the risk of security to their business, and get their security in order, as there's a tangible cost threat?
Adding: Wikipedia is also not necessarily authoritative.
What moral question?
This thread is someone questioning calling it was a ransomware attack, it was one. Being a ransomeware attack doesn't preclude it from being blackmail, and I don't think anyone you replied to has questioned the morality of it...
Calling this "randomware" subtly blurs the line between copying and stealing. The attackers here didn't remove access to the data (clearly stealing), they made a copy (clearly a crime other than stealing, at least in my view).
It's more like blackmail than kidnapping.
No, a ransom is a fee paid for the release of something you value. Cryptography is one way to take a user's data, and release it back to them on payment.
This is blackmail. They want payment to not release something.
This is "the malware got in and sent copies back home; now home base is threatening release and expecting payment to prevent it." To me, this is blackmail done via hacking, not ransomware.
They copied the data, and they want money otherwise they will release it. It's ordinary blackmail.
> Ransomware is a type of malware from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim's data or perpetually block access to it unless a ransom is paid.
(added emphasis)
Here's the third sentence from that very same paragraph:
>It encrypts the victim's files, making them inaccessible, and demands a ransom payment to decrypt them.
Not everything can be explained in a single sentence.