I wrote a whole blog (several, in fact) about the need to break the ransomware economy cycle and still believe it’s the most urgent and important thing governments can do to protect civil society.
Having orgs pay ransoms, including via sham cybersecurity vendors, is directly harming society.
Maybe once the AI bubble pops, we can get back to having serious conversations about the harm the status quo has caused.
@GossiTheDog still waiting for people to acknowledge how much cryptocurrencies have enabled the proliferation of the ransomware industry
I still think that crypto currencies exist *primarily to fund crime.*
.
(Yes, I know that you *can* use them for other things.)
@JeffGrigg @suzannealdrich @GossiTheDog you only think that because it’s true.
@JeffGrigg
Well yes, but without them crime would use other means. Different properties, cost and risk structures, but crime generally found a way.
I'm also not sure where the complaint is, the guy kept a sizeable part of the money in the USA as taxable profit.
I've always found that contract before versus trial demo stealth install as a separation criteria these guys are serious itsec, these are cyber criminals, a bit arbitrarily.
@suzannealdrich @GossiTheDog
And before you start yelling.
Stealth installation of illegal software.
You mean like totally "legal" ad networks that run JavaScript to fingerprint devices?
Or let's discuss the total legal business of providing home IP proxy, commercially.
Guess if it's done by a Western corporate entity with the correct backing it's a completely legal IT service, even if nobody could
sketch me a consumer ISP contract where reselling the bandwidth is legal. But hey, their legal department smokes good stuff and hallucinates these. And manages to isolate them with multiple levels of contracts.
@yacc143 @JeffGrigg @suzannealdrich @GossiTheDog It's times like this I wish I could search my dashboard. There was someome who said something several weeks ago that I think covers your key point. "Economic justice is a cybersecurity issue". They were talking about how people in poor nations turn to cybercrime to support themselves, but there is something to be said about how the rich not facing consequences amplifies the impact as well.
@Epic_Null
Well, there are a number of aspects here.
Security starts always with a threat assessment. What might be a problem for you might be not a problem for me.
IT security got much more complicated with the internet: one of the issues was that the attackers for many attacks suddenly could come from around the globe. And at the same time the deterrent of the criminal system works less well internationally. And different costs of living might
@JeffGrigg @suzannealdrich @GossiTheDog
@Epic_Null
introduce additional attack options that were not feasible locally.
And that's basically what all the crazy AI security issues are.
Not new issues, but issues that have become effective due some operations that suddenly due to the availability of LLM technology are suddenly viable. That can be much better quality forgery of documents, emails, phishing, but it also speeds up dumb trial and error for security issues.
@JeffGrigg @suzannealdrich @GossiTheDog
@yacc143 @JeffGrigg @suzannealdrich @GossiTheDog
Before cryptocurrencies were available, ransomware was not able to scale to the sums they can now. Sure you can use gift cards and other money laundering schemes, but it was cryptocurrencies, and really only cryptocurrencies that allowed for this level of scale.
Plus, we don't need to make things easier for criminals. Force them to find other ways.
@sophieschmieg @JeffGrigg @suzannealdrich @GossiTheDog You do realize that some countries tend to tolerate “cybercrime” as long as you practice it with paying “customers” abroad. Guess the mistake of the gentleman was operating directly in the US; he should have offered his services from a more friendly jurisdiction.
@GossiTheDog Did you write a blog or a blog post? Asking for a friend.