U.S. to give ransomware hacks similar priority as terrorism, official says

Re:U.S. to give ransomware hacks similar priority as terrori... by creato on Thursday June 03, 2021 @09:18PM (#27389401)

Many of the most serious recent incidents don't involve theft of end user data or impacting end users in any real way, unless you consider the "end users" of gas stations and ferry boats to be the victims of these attacks. That's not incorrect in a way, but also seems like a pointlessly wide net.

The thing I'm a bit tired of is IT people in these threads taking every incident that comes along as an opportunity to elevate their pet cause. These more serious incidents have more in common with mafia extortion rackets than computer security.

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Re:U.S. to give ransomware hacks similar priority as terrori... by joe_the_user on Thursday June 03, 2021 @11:22PM (#27390200)

The debate is pretty much divided between people who say "improved security is the solution" and people who say "treating it as crime/terrorism/the-mafia is the solution".

I'm in the improve the security camp. I think security can be improved if we impose good standards (meaning enforce inconvenient things like no backdoor updating apps, no critical infrastructure connected to the web).

The reason "treating this like terrorism" is useless is that there's always another hacker. It's hard but not that hard and anything doable today will be automatable tomorrow.

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Re:U.S. to give ransomware hacks similar priority as terrori... by runeks on Friday June 04, 2021 @02:06AM (#27391060)

Your viewpoint is extreme. Saying the increased effort by law enforcement is “useless” is unfounded. Sure, it won’t solve the problem by itself, but it’s entirely possible it will help.

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Re:U.S. to give ransomware hacks similar priority as terrori... by ClumsyPilot on Friday June 04, 2021 @05:24AM (#27391965)

What is the percentage of hacks that are ultimately traced to individual and result in his imprisonment? 0.1%? Are you going to ever get that even over 10%?

If the hack comes from a jurisdiction without extradition, how will you solve that? How foea a country know they are not allowing their citizens to be harrassed with trumped up charges? What if definition of hacking differs in two countries?

It is not just Russia and China, Denmans and Uk have refused to extradite to the US becausw pf concerns over inhumane treatment.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/10/dutch-court-bl...

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Re:U.S. to give ransomware hacks similar priority as terrori... by joe_the_user on Friday June 04, 2021 @05:12PM (#27399127)

Saying the increased effort by law enforcement is “useless” is unfounded.

Note you are misquoting me: my comment: *"..."treating this like terrorism" is useless"

The right sort of the law enforcement action might be useful. But "treating this like terrorism" is just escalating penalties, threats and so-forth, which doesn't make sense for a very conventional property crime.

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Re:U.S. to give ransomware hacks similar priority as terrori... by mcguire on Friday June 04, 2021 @05:53PM (#27399504)

Several major countries have a history of not prosecuting computer crimes as long as those crimes don't affect local targets. In fact, the crime is the "day job" and training of people who participate in the whole "cyber war" thing during international shenanigans. (See South Korea, Georgia, Estonia, and the Ukraine.)

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