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I'm curious what the real goal is with demands like this. Surely, given the size of the demand, it is beyond the authority of TSMC to pay up, even _if_ they wa
by alias_neo 3y ago
I'm curious what the real goal is with demands like this.
Surely, given the size of the demand, it is beyond the authority of TSMC to pay up, even _if_ they wanted to?
I imagine governments and authorities with any sort of stake in what could possibly be done with such a sum of money (it's unlikely to be used for Good, right?) would have an oversized say in whether or not they are allowed to pay it?
Is there recent precedent for ransoms of this size being paid?
What kind of data could they actually have "stolen" that's worth TSMC paying up $70M, rather than just writing it off?
- 55555 3y agoFor bigcorps, the ransoms are often 20-30 million USD. One of these is probably paid every few days. TSMC can easily pay 70 and might.
- hardware2win 3y agoTSMC has most desired technology and knowledge of our time It is modern equivalent of "rocket science" decades ago
- flkenosad 3y agoSeriously. They might be the most valuable organization in the world to target for this sort of thing.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kortilla 3y agoAbsolutely not. Read “the chip wars”. It does a good deep dive into the relationships of all of these companies. TSMC is amazing but they didn’t invent nor build the EUV lithography machines that enable their processes.
- hardware2win 3y agoYoure right I tend to write this about whole semico, but this time I went just with TSMC, but it isnt fully correct
- Etheryte 3y agoTSMC is the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world and they have technology and manufacturing processes literally no one else has. As of right now their market cap is roughly $500B. Surely they hold information that's worth more than $70M.
- s3p 3y agoI mean maybe but that is completely unrelated to what OP is asking. He's questioning whether they would have the ability and the authority to move that amount of money to a criminal.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- yellow_lead 3y agoYeah, but that info isn't in this dump. Most of it probably isn't even on paper but in the minds of their top employees.
- silviot 3y agoIf that's true those employees could be kidnapped for a high ransom...
- bigmattystyles 3y agoInstitutional knowledge is more akin to the ship of Theseus. Good companies know this, after all, even super knowledgeable employees sometimes look the wrong way when crossing the street.
- marcosdumay 3y agoThat's a much higher bar than hacking into some computers. And also, as people pointed, unless you are wholesale kidnapping enough people to fill a prison, it doesn't work like that.
- bluGill 3y agoYou would need most of the people. One high level person is meaningless. Sure you can say "Dave" knows everything, but any smart company knows Dave could retire, or die at anytime and so the important stuff he knows is spread among a bunch of other people. Often it is also written down, just not in an easy format.
- bigbillheck 3y ago> the size of the demand It's not even 12 hours revenue for TSMC.
- flkenosad 3y agoOr about a full day of profit with an operating margin about 50%.
- alias_neo 3y agoMy point is more about what could be done with $70M in the wrong hands; that's the bit I imagine authorities that might move to block a ransom pay from happening would care about.
- pohl 3y agoSo much of the world's wealth is already in the wrong hands. What's a little more?
- throwawayswiss 3y agoI know right. Thats why UK and swiss provide safe heaven for dirty money in order to keep it away from criminals.
- hammock 3y ago> Surely, given the size of the demand, it is beyond the authority of TSMC to pay up, even _if_ they wanted to? Think again. Companies try to hide it really well but million-dollar ransoms are paid all. The. Time. Likewise with insurance payouts for kidnapping ransoms
- oxygen_crisis 3y agoA friend of a co-worker works for a contracting agency with services including incident response for data ransoms. He says their go-to tactic is to haggle with the ransomers to bring the ransom down to some fraction of what the customer paid them and then implying to the customer that they cracked the key.
- lyu07282 3y agoAssuming the security consultant and the ransom gang are even distinct people at all. IT Sec is such an incredibly shady industry.
- acer589 3y agoThat's what Garmin ended up doing. The group had sanctions, so they had to pay a British company. https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21353842/garmin-ransomware-attack-wearables-wastedlocker-evil-corp https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21353842/garmin-ransomware...
- nanidin 3y agoYes, though in the case I am most familiar with, making the payment was a big deal because the hackers were in a sanctioned nation, which makes sending payments there illegal. If I recall correctly they went through some intermediary but still made the ransom payment. Which goes against all of the annual import/export corpo training, but I guess they found a loophole.
- alexk307 3y agoTSMC had 70+ billion USD in revenue last year. There’s plenty of data worth 70 million dollars to them