A Clever Strategy to Minimize the Damage From Cyberattacks
Block information so the attackers can’t build a reputation, say University of Texas researchers.
Ransomware is hard to stop, but the cybercriminals who use it do have one Achilles’ heel: Who trusts an anonymous crook?
The criminals invade a victim’s computer system, encrypting files or wreaking some other kind of havoc, and promise to reverse the harm if, and only if, a ransom is paid, typically in untraceable Bitcoin. (More from Bloomberg here, here, and here.) The risk for the criminal is that the victim, such as a company or a government agency, will refuse to pay the ransom because it doesn’t trust the criminal to hold up his or her end of the bargain after the money is paid. So the criminal has the tricky task of appearing scrupulously honest about undoing the damage while also being clearly unscrupulous for launching the attack in the first place.