How Bitcoin Has Fueled Ransomware Attacks | Hacker News Reader

How Bitcoin Has Fueled Ransomware Attacks

npr.org

48 pointselorant12 comments

Ransomware attacks used western union before they used Bitcoin.

Because Bitcoin is a relatively convenient way to perform international payments (emphasis on relatively) -- you can probably make a case that its existence increased the number of low value randsomware attacks. ... but so would other low friction ways of paying people in other countries.

But when you talk about $11 million dollar payments for ransomware hitting major institutions-- a way would be found to make the payment, bitcoin or not. Insecure systems, software, and practices (including inadequate backups) as well as the almost complete lack of enforcement against international electronic crime are the root causes and nothing short of fixing them can prevent extremely high value ransomware attacks.

Even in a fantasy world where the payment couldn't happen-- which is certainly not our world without Bitcoin-- attackers could get compensated in other ways: They could demand the release of prisoners, the shuttering of business locations, the divulging of information-- it doesn't matter if its inefficient, because the cost of the attack is extremely low.

If you're talking about money laundering, Bitcoin doesn't even hold a candle to the activities major international banks engage in (and are sometimes penalized for) regularly.

> anonymous and hard to trace

Didn't read beyond.

Maybe the talk about another Bitcoin, than the one we know? Media seems to try to create a narrative about Bitcoin that is false.

Bitcoin is an open and public ledger - there is no easier and better way to trace flow of money and its obviously not anonymous and has never been.

In fact, ransomware groups usually add another 10+% on ransom payments if victims wants to use Bitcoin. Because there are more privacy focused (less risk for attacker) solutions.

Tracing the on-chain transactions is easy.

But when you add in the existence of off-chain services like mixers and bitcoin exchanges, it can quickly become impossible to trace the flow of money if the attacker is putting any effort into trying to hide their traces.

Tracing the coins used in the ransom is easy, but chances are the attacker doesn't own them anymore. Tracing the attacker's actual funds is hard.

Even worse with fiat

It is not actually hard and the ransomware gangs are well known. It is privateering: state enabled mafia, like French and English sponsored pirates did back in a day. China and Russia celebrate their ransomware industry. The gangs do not need to bother hide any traces.

Here is a better article on ransomware and Bitcoin:

http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2021/06/why-do-ransomware-gangs...

Next up: how cash has fueled robberies by being valuable and easy to carry

And the ability to wire money between countries makes it easier to kidnappers to get paid random. Should we get rid of money wiring?

Like guns, absence of criminal activity in crypto would imply the stated value proposition is illusory.

And like guns, this value proposition flips in favor of the good guys when the bad guys wrestle sufficient power over them.

It's puzzling to me that wire transfer bureaus don't offer some sort of fraud protection or insurance.

It seems that it would be a useful, if not essential, feature.

> "You now have a possibility to move millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency across national boundaries in seconds," said Yonatan Striem-Amit, a co-founder of Cybereason, a Boston-based company that offers protection from hackers.

I'm not a fan of cryptocurrencies, nor have I ever purchased cryptos, but even I must admit that cryptos get a few things right, such as cross national liquidity. The lack of regulation to protect consumers from fraudsters, scammers, and other dishonest actors, the untraceability of cryptos like Monero, the slowness of transactions processing (Bitcoin), and the wild volatility (your chicken breast costs $X one day, $1.5X the next, then $0.8X), all conspire to blunt the mass public adoption of cryptos as a practical currency, but these are not necessarily insurmountable problems.

Can we have a digital currency that shares cryptos' liquidity and trans national use that is also stable over the short and medium term, regulated enough to protect the public but not so regulated that you end up with a clunky version of fiat currencies, that can support fast transactions and can be tracked by governments? Something like the PBOC's digital yuan seems like a good first step, even if I'm not a fan of the communist regime in general.

USDC?

Tell us more about the Colonial pipeline ransomware Bitcoin recovered

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