Sanctions
What isn't being done is sanctioning the companies that pay the ransom without notifying authorities and working with authorities.
The Russian-based Evil Corp is jumping from one malware strain to another in hopes of evading sanctions placed on it by the US government in 2019. You might be wondering why cyberextortionists in the Land of Putin give a bit flip about US sanctions: as we understand it, the sanctions mean anyone doing business with or handling …
...banned US persons "from engaging in transactions" with Evil Corp, and "foreign persons may be subject to secondary sanctions for knowingly facilitating a significant transaction or transactions"...
So actually that's exactly what's been done. If you pay up you may get your data back, but you will be legally screwed. The only problem is catching those who pay in order to shit on them.
Talking of well-known ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS), is there one more pernicious and rewarding than only buy your oil in dollar$ or we invade and flood your society with foreign mercenary troops and explode deadly weapons in your midst?
It is an ignorant blunt tool though rather than any sort of smart intelligent device and a simple switch to payment for goods in anything else very quickly destroys the power of the threat and renders the frenemy bankrupt, so such is really a catastrophic vulnerability whenever/if ever exercised and exploited.
Nowadays that seems to be roubles. ..... TimMaher
Is roubles for Russian oil and gas so crazy and unreasonable whenever dollars are nowadays worth next to nothing being as how they are so easily constantly printed in the sum of trillions and bear no relationship to anything at all expensive and valuable held to an attractive gold standard? Surely it is just so much fancy printed paper masking a monumentally catastrophic fraud ?
Is not what’s good for the goose, not good for the gander too .... although I do recognise that creates a dilemma and difficulty which is quite probably impossible in any way to justify and propose is not designedly inequitable‽
A group called Grief Corp – believed by the Treasury Department to be a rebranded Evil Corp – was accused of being behind ransomware thrown at the NRA and Sinclair Broadcast Group late last year.
But the NRA and Sinclair are stooges of Putin, why would they attack their own useful idiots?