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Re:US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat by ryan_j_naughton on Sunday August 02, 2020 @09:15PM (#24033217)
> It’s a direct financial punishment for a company with lax security practices. It encourages greater security practices.

That argument could be used to justify any theft or even kidnapping.

I know many people who grew up in countries where kidnapping was a very real concern. Consequently, they had to adopt "greater security practices" and it had a very real, negative effect on their lives.

There are real harms to randomware. Companies go out of business, people lose their jobs, people lose their service providers, etc.

To say, "it serves them right for not following proper security" literally can be said for a mom/pop business in a poor neighborhood who didn't have bulletproof glass or bars on their windows. It is negating the fact that (a) the harms are very real and (b) security costs money and resources, which is effectively another tax on their business.

If instead the government made it illegal to pay such ransoms and actively audited large BTC transactions and charged people accordingly, then we could get rid of the incentives to do this in the first place.

The government should similarly hold firms accountable when they are hacked (due to the harms on consumers) and require prompt disclosure of any hacks.

There are ways to incentivize the preferred outcomes without supporting the active theft of property and destruction of someone's business.

Re:US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat by scrollaway on Sunday August 02, 2020 @10:44PM (#24033726)
Physical and digital security aren't the same thing. There's no such thing as "this website is in a bad internet neighbourhood and should take extra precautions".

I get where you're coming from but you can't really just flat out say "you can justify kidnapping with the same logic". Like, no, you can't. Fully agreed the government should be the ones playing the role of incentivizing security, but you can't then go back and say that security takes time and money those companies should not have to spend. They should, regardless of who keeps them accountable for it...

Re:US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat by MattSayar on Monday August 03, 2020 @12:08PM (#24039526)
In addition, the company isn't the only victim in a ransomware attack, its customers are too.

And does anyone really believe the hackers deleted the data off their own servers? They can easily double-dip by selling that information. It's valuable, so why would they delete it?

Re:US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat by dannyw on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @02:09AM (#24047154)
Double dipping ruins the reputation of the hackers and future income potential.
Re:US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat by sumedh on Sunday August 02, 2020 @10:55PM (#24033781)
> The government should similarly hold firms accountable when they are hacked

What should the govt so when govt agencies get hacked?