The simplest solution remains to ban the formal exchange of crytpo for fiat, across Western nations.
Its a lot harder to justify giant ransomware campaigns when you're paid in Amazon gift cards instead of easily exchangeable cryptocoins.
Its a lot harder to justify giant ransomware campaigns when you're paid in Amazon gift cards instead of easily exchangeable cryptocoins.
I don’t think yours is a simple solution or the right one (banning cryptocurrency). But I do think bans on payment of the ransom are interesting.
And they won't care about if companies pay ransome or not.
Treat the cause of the sickness, not the symptoms.
Or I guess two new categories, because the victims are all criminals now too.
The victims won't become criminals because you'll never find a senior executive willing to go to prison to pay a ransomware ransom. And no, "pay someone to pay it" or "have a random low-level nobody pay someone to pay it" is not going to work. Judges/juries aren't that stupid and senior leadership typically know judges/juries aren't that stupid.
Criminalizing paying ransoms would work, and this particular "they'd just pay someone to pay the ransom" argument against criminalizing paying ransoms is beyond specious. Criminalizing paying has worked with other, much more serious types of ransoms. Why wouldn't it work here?
It just seems like the bill on security has come due and I recommend paying it. Otherwise you leave the economy open for much more serious attacks than asking a few million in crypto.