Ransomware Attacks: Why It Should Be Illegal to Pay the Ransom

By Anthony Berrios

Blog Post #2

2/6/2020

Article writer Fleming Shi talks about the increasing ransomware attacks and how paying ransom to these hackers only makes the problem much, much, worse. Often times there is no way to insure that the hacker will keep his end of the bargain after a ransom payment is made. This leads to more future payments as the hacker never loses his leverage. Instead of paying, Shi insists that companies and municipalities need to fight back by making ransom payments illegal and instead develop computer professionals and make a “digital army” to increase cyber security and avoid future attacks.

Shi then states how ransomware has been around for nearly 20 years but that it has been growing at a rapid pace. Shi reports that as of 2019, more than 70 state and local governments have been hit with ransomware that year alone. The main problem with these ransom ware attacks is that hackers don’t discriminate. State governments, local governments, small municipalities, and local boroughs have all been hit. When cities fold and give in to these ransoms, the hacker become more powerful. They use this money to grow and create a bigger network and infrastructure that leads to more hacking in the future. Shi describes the relationship between ransoms perfectly by stating “Ransom payments fuel the efforts of the cyber-criminals. Hackers use that money to become more capable, commit more crimes, and expand their operations. This helps feed into the activities of the Dark Web economy.”

Personally I think that the dark web and hackers for hire like the ones that use ransomware to hack local government and cities is a major issue. This also ties into the dark web economy previously mentioned by Shi in which the more we give in to this illegal activity, the more money criminals will have access to on the dark web where it is much harder to prosecute them. Efforts are going to have to be made to at least slow these hackers down, but I’m not sure if making paying ransoms illegal will solve this issue. This will only make it more difficult for the government to track hacking activity because now local governments will be more hesitant to cooperate with the federal government if they know that paying the ransom is illegal.