Book: The Ransomware Hunting Team

I've read several books before about the unsung heroes who devote their time to tracking down and closing down computer hackers, and enjoy the thrilling tales of intellectual cat and mouse.

This one, just published December 2022, is specifically about ransomware, where hackers try to extract payment to unlock your computer. As the author points out, this is "one stop shopping" which is a lot simpler than trying to find a buyer for stolen data. Just sell it back to the owner!

So far, wonderfully written. Highly recommended.

Twitter and bitcoin, two ingredients required for effective malware. Another reason to absolutely avoid both, if you needed one.

And Windows. All these malware programs are designed to attack Windows machines, because they're as porous as fishnets.

The burgeoning ransomware crime wave led to an exploding $8 billion(!) ransomware insurance industry. What started as targeted criminal activity became a profit center for an entire sector of the "legitimate" economy.

With no incentive to stop ransomware it has become a cost of doing business.

Also an exploding market of "ransomware remediation firms" who claim to decrypt hacked files, but actually negotiate lower ransoms with the criminals, receive decryption keys, and pocket the difference -- all without telling the client.

The FBI has shown no interest in these businesses, which encourage and reward criminals, in part because at least one of them has the #2 man at the FBI on their board of directors.

The level at which Russian organized crime has infiltrated American society is hard to overestimate. The ransomware "industry" is no longer teenagers in their parents' basements, it's now a huge international business sponsored by the governments of Russian, Iran and to a lesser extent North Korea.  That's another reason nobody on this side of the Atlantic is too interested in trying to shut it down. Kickbacks to Congress would surprise me not at all.

Some of the less ethically-challenged firms struggle with this thought: by paying ransoms and moving on, they're actually perpetuating ransomware. If companies suddenly started refusing to pay, the hackers would have no motivation to continue, and the attacks would pretty quickly dry up.

The unofficial motto of one of these companies:

Quote :

If you're not part of the solution, there's good money to be made maintaining the problem.