Push to ban ransomware payments following Australia’s biggest cyberattack [telecom]

Bill Horne

2023-04-12 15:55:14 UTC

Post by The Telecom Digest
The Australian government is being pushed to ban the payment of cyber
ransoms, usually demanded in cryptocurrency, following a local
business suffering a mass data breach and subsequent ransom demand.

I think this is a good idea. Paying the attackers [just] makes this
attacking method lucrative.

In the early days of the PC revolution, when the machines were being
introduced into schools, I met an "IT" guy who complained about the
"unbelieveable" number of viruses that the PC's were picking up.

I offered to solve the problem, and I changed all the PC's in the
"Computer Lab" over to BOOtP operaton, so that they would download
their operating system from the lab's server instead of their own hard
drives. I removed the OS from the hard drives to prevent any attempt
to bypass the BOOTP startup, and set each BIOS to require a password
in order to change the boot options.

After that, I told the teachers whom were using the computer lab that
when a student complained of a virus or other mysterious problems, to
"Just tell the student to stop doing whatever he was doing before,"
and to confiscate whatever floppy disk was in the PC, and then turn
that student's PC off and back on again, so that it would reload the
OS from the server.

After I cashed the check, I got the teachers together again, and told
them that their students had been deliberately bringing infected disks
into their lab to avoid the hard work of learning how to use the
programs they were being asked to study.

The teachers decided that, from then on, they would destroy any floppy
disks that were in the PC's where an infection was found. One of them
suggested using scissors to cut open the flppy disks and discarding
the pieces while the entire class watched (this was when 5.25 inch
floppy disks were being used). A few parents complained, the teachers
told me later, but they would always back off when they were told that
the floppy disks were evidence of a crime, and that the teachers were
destroying them to save their students from getting a criminal record.

Remove the reward, obviate the risk.

Bill Horne