There's so many creative things you can do when you imagine yourself as one of these attackers.

- Make a big target amount of money that any large company can pay, eg $10M, and tell people you'll release everyone's key if the amount is raised.

- Use an online board like this one to control the state of your network.

- Embarrass individual firms by posting pics of their offices from their own webcams.

Etc, etc. I reckon talking about these sorts of things will help find solutions rather than just inspire the bad guys.

> Make a big target amount of money that any large company can pay, eg $10M

That sounds like a good way to get state level actors on your case.

Yes, as long as the payments are individually relatively small and anonymous, it's easy for people to misunderstand the amount they may actually be getting. Once you paint a target in the millions, people will notice more, it will become a bigger news story, some congressman or another will make it a pet cause, and then you've got a lot or attention on you. Like any criminal enterprise, the less attention from authorities the better.

Thanks, we'll give it a go next time.

I've seen variants that use Bitmessage and other anonymous messengers before.