Will Governments Ban Ransom Payments To Hackers?

Ransomware criminals are holding businesses and organisations hostage and demanding large payments with greater frequency and scale.  In order to restore the victims systems the prevalent criminal method  is for the hacker to demand to get paid in crypocurrency, which can’t be tracked by the victim or the police.

The financial damage from these cyber attacks range from £70k to £10m and now some US and UK technology experts are urging their governments to make paying ransom to criminal hackers illegal. 

The CEO of Colonial Pipeline has admitted his company paid hackers nearly $4.5m after their attack forced the firm to stop transporting fuel. Since last August, the hackers responsible for the US pipeline hack, DarkSide, have made at least $90m in ransom payments from about 47 victims, Bitcoin records show.

DarkSide is just one of more than a dozen prolific ransomware gangs making vast profits from holding companies, schools, governments and hospitals to ransom. 

Hacking groups work anonymously, so are hard to track down and they often operate in countries unwilling to arrest them. 
Ransomware attacks shut down a victims computer systems or data until a ransom is paid. Law-enforcement agencies around the world are increasingly urging victims not to pay. But paying ransoms is not illegal and many organisations pay in secret.

• The Ransomware Task Force (RTF) a global coalition of cyber experts is lobbying governments to take action.  It has made nearly 50 recommendations to curb the crime spree, but it hasn’t agreed as to whether countries should ban ransom payments.

• Britain's ex-GCHQ chief has urged the government to ban ransomware payments to stop criminals profiteering from attacks. Ciaran Martin, the founding chief executive of GCHQ's Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), now an eminent Professor at Oxford University's Blavatnik School, spoke following the Irish health service being  targeted with a ransom attack by criminals. 

Opponents say that a ban on ransom payouts would push criminals to go after even more essential targets, such as hospitals, forcing victims to choose between payment and widespread upheaval.

USA Today:       BBC:     Daily Mail:     Financial Times:     CyberWire:        

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