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Comment by ArcHound | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you can enforce such a rule. I think it's a good approach too.

Another issue is that not paying up and risking restore from underfunded ops dept. might be more expensive than paying up AND making a selected executive look bad. And we can't have that, can we.

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It would make the ransomware statistic go down without actually stopping crime. Any company that considers paying the ransom would have a strong incentive to never report the security incident to avoid being punished for ransom payments

Plus it gives the ransomware gangs a whole new angle they can use.

So, remember how you illegally paid us a ransom a few months ago? Unless you want to go to prison, then you better...

We're already seeing this against companies who pay ransoms and fail to report the breaches when they're legally required to - but it would be much worse if it's against individuals who are criminally liable.

Make employees criminally liable for making ransom payments, along with whistleblower protections. Very few employees will risk going to prison to protect their employer. You can always get another job.

I don't think this helps anybody. There will always be some poor soul taking the blame for the crimes of the higher ups. And what exactly the crime would be? Using company money to pay an unspecified third party? Also pretty hard to enforce.

It should be a crime to knowingly transfer money to criminals for any reason. And it wouldn't not hard to enforce: offer bounties to whistleblowers who turn in their colleagues.

It likely is in many places, under laws relating to dealing with proceeds of crime, but I’m not aware of any prosecutions having ever been made on this basis.

Agreed - it’s not that it’s a bad point but it would be an ineffective rule which is usually an excuse to forgo other more effective (usually more expensive) options

Unfortunately the actual solution will probably have to mirror real world, which means balkanizing the Internet to clarify legal jurisdiction, maybe some international police task force to aid with cross-border investigation, but ultimately it all hinges on whether and how much the countries with most nuclear aircraft carriers are willing to pressure other countries to take this seriously.

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