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There was a story published by ProPublica[1] reporting on this sort of progression from the side of people negotiating to pay the ransoms. Here's a small excerp

There was a story published by ProPublica[1] reporting on this sort of progression from the side of people negotiating to pay the ransoms. Here's a small excerpt, but I think the whole thing is worth a read: Storfer learned quickly never to use the term “hacking.” Instead, he would assume his correspondent “thinks they’re a businessman,” Storfer said. “I’d say: ‘Look, we can’t afford this [ransom] at this time. Do you mind providing your product [recovery key] at a lower rate?’ And it worked,” he said. “They’re doing a job where everyone hates them, so feeling like they were respected made them work with us. I like to think empathy goes a long way.” The rapport sometimes reaped discounts. “We were able to get a $5,000 ransom lessened to $3,000 because they knew we could deliver it exactly when we said we were going to get it to them,” Storfer said. [1]: https://features.propublica.org/ransomware/ransomware-attack-data-recovery-firms-paying-hackers/ https://features.propublica.org/ransomware/ransomware-attack...

gowld 6y ago
Reads like someone bragging about being incompetent. I'm sure the foreign language native attackers who call themselves "Evil Corp" would respond to "non-business" negotiations as well. They don't want your data deleted, they want money.
chillacy 6y ago
Reminds me of some of the stories in Never Split The Difference, where the author was a hostage negotiator for the FBI who would reduce ransoms (on human hostages) from millions to in one case, a few thousand. He relayed a similar reasoning, at the end of the day they want to get paid and a dead person is worth $0 (and potentially the swat team coming in).
jessriedel 6y ago
Yes. In the few times I have interacted with criminals doing something that essentially everyone agrees is wrong -- not just people violating laws that many disagree with, but really unambiguously bad stuff -- they have all consistently had some strained story (that I think they truly believed, at some level) for why what they were doing is OK. It's really sobering to see in person, and deeply undermines the faith one has in one's justification for one's own behavior. There was a story a while back, perhaps on HN, discussing the results of an academic survey of prisoners (in the UK, I think). They consistently evaluated themselves as more honorable than the average person on almost every dimension.

gowld 6y ago

Reads like someone bragging about being incompetent. I'm sure the foreign language native attackers who call themselves "Evil Corp" would respond to "non-business" negotiations as well. They don't want your data deleted, they want money.

chillacy 6y ago

Reminds me of some of the stories in Never Split The Difference, where the author was a hostage negotiator for the FBI who would reduce ransoms (on human hostages) from millions to in one case, a few thousand. He relayed a similar reasoning, at the end of the day they want to get paid and a dead person is worth $0 (and potentially the swat team coming in).

jessriedel 6y ago

Yes. In the few times I have interacted with criminals doing something that essentially everyone agrees is wrong -- not just people violating laws that many disagree with, but really unambiguously bad stuff -- they have all consistently had some strained story (that I think they truly believed, at some level) for why what they were doing is OK. It's really sobering to see in person, and deeply undermines the faith one has in one's justification for one's own behavior. There was a story a while back, perhaps on HN, discussing the results of an academic survey of prisoners (in the UK, I think). They consistently evaluated themselves as more honorable than the average person on almost every dimension.