80% of orgs that paid the ransom were hit again

Re:80% of orgs that paid the ransom were hit again by microtherion on Friday June 18, 2021 @02:29PM (#27553362)

It appears that some of the major ransomware gangs are operating from Russia and are tolerated by the government, as long as they don't hit domestic targets.

The US cannot really send special forces there without risking a massive escalation.

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Re:80% of orgs that paid the ransom were hit again by MrMorden on Friday June 18, 2021 @02:48PM (#27553553)

No, but the people operating in Russia like to travel elsewhere, and do.

Also, the US and allies can enforce Russian AML laws as written on paper. If, say, the UK freezes all of Oleg Deripaska's assets there, Vova will absolutely get the message. We're not going to bring down the Russian government with military force for a million different reasons, but doing it with sanctions and prosecution is a totally different story.

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Re:80% of orgs that paid the ransom were hit again by smsm42 on Friday June 18, 2021 @02:59PM (#27553673)

When they do US gets them. That happens from time to time, if you watch the news, you notice there are guys caught periodically who thought it's time for a nice vacation in Spain resting from their criminal activities... only to be picked up in the airport. However, the smarter ones stay put inside Russia and those are hard to get.

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Re:80% of orgs that paid the ransom were hit again by chihuahua on Friday June 18, 2021 @06:11PM (#27555552)

Best example was when VW's Oliver Schmidt was arrested in Miami as he was changing planes. He was in trouble from the emissions fraud scheme.

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Re:80% of orgs that paid the ransom were hit again by david12345 on Saturday June 19, 2021 @03:26AM (#27558542)

Yup, for example that credit card frauder who went to the Maldives..

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Re:80% of orgs that paid the ransom were hit again by londons_explore on Friday June 18, 2021 @02:34PM (#27553407)

I'm sure the US has hundreds of spies and personnel in Russia at any point in time.

But sending a spy to a software developers house and assassinating them probably isn't going to stop the problem - more people will spring up doing the same.

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Re:80% of orgs that paid the ransom were hit again by kilroy123 on Friday June 18, 2021 @02:53PM (#27553607)

We might not though. We don't even have a main diplomat there.

Russia has always been notoriously hard to spy on.

I would not be surprised if there was only a handful of well placed assets and most of the spying being done electronically.

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