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I think the one university that closed in Illinois due to a ransom attack made possible by Crypto will in the long run prove to be more valuable to society than

by TimPC 4y ago

I think the one university that closed in Illinois due to a ransom attack made possible by Crypto will in the long run prove to be more valuable to society than all of crypto. If only we had some way of preserving all the things crypto destroys.

dubswithus 4y ago
Was ransomware really not a thing before Bitcoin?
- TimPC 4y ago
  It was far rarer because it was much more difficult to collect payments.
  - randomhodler84 4y ago
    It was rarer because we had less computers and less interconnectness. Major incidents are caused by supply chain compromise, or very targeted attacks, all of which gets worse as the population grows. Taking payments over the internet has been fairly easy for decades. If not, do you really think we would be where we are today. I get you like to blame cryptocurrency on crime, but it is but a component, of which other components are just as critical and yet we cannot have a modern digital society without them.
    - TimPC 4y ago
      Taking regulated payments subject to financial law as a Russian hacker group is quite difficult. Bitcoin is used in nearly all ransomware attacks precisely because it is unregulated. The idea that they’d just take PayPal without Bitcoin is laughable.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago
  It may have, but crypto allowed it to become truly scalable. Before, you had to coordinate with each of your victims about how to receive the ransom while trying to evade the authorities. Now you can just take over a random machine, paint a Bitcoin address on the screen, and voila, you're done.
  - randomhodler84 4y ago
    Except it doesn’t really work that way these days. The bad guys run onion payment sites where you exchange an id and get a unique address — they still need to coordinate with the victims. And before cryptocurrency was big, it was shady credit card gateways in non-friendly jurisdictions. You cannot blame cryptocurrency any more than you can blame onion routing, encryption or the internet. It’s all just tech that is evolving and getting more efficient.

by TimPC 4y ago

dubswithus 4y ago

Was ransomware really not a thing before Bitcoin?

TimPC 4y ago
It was far rarer because it was much more difficult to collect payments.
- randomhodler84 4y ago
  It was rarer because we had less computers and less interconnectness. Major incidents are caused by supply chain compromise, or very targeted attacks, all of which gets worse as the population grows. Taking payments over the internet has been fairly easy for decades. If not, do you really think we would be where we are today. I get you like to blame cryptocurrency on crime, but it is but a component, of which other components are just as critical and yet we cannot have a modern digital society without them.
  - TimPC 4y ago
    Taking regulated payments subject to financial law as a Russian hacker group is quite difficult. Bitcoin is used in nearly all ransomware attacks precisely because it is unregulated. The idea that they’d just take PayPal without Bitcoin is laughable.
polygamous_bat 4y ago
It may have, but crypto allowed it to become truly scalable. Before, you had to coordinate with each of your victims about how to receive the ransom while trying to evade the authorities. Now you can just take over a random machine, paint a Bitcoin address on the screen, and voila, you're done.
- randomhodler84 4y ago
  Except it doesn’t really work that way these days. The bad guys run onion payment sites where you exchange an id and get a unique address — they still need to coordinate with the victims. And before cryptocurrency was big, it was shady credit card gateways in non-friendly jurisdictions. You cannot blame cryptocurrency any more than you can blame onion routing, encryption or the internet. It’s all just tech that is evolving and getting more efficient.