Investing in ransomware

[galactica]

According to various research reports including this one from Cybersecurity Ventures, global ransomware is growing at a fast rate (from $325 mil in 2015 to $5 bil in 2017 according to this report)

http://cybersecurityventures.com/ransomware-damage-report-2017-5-billion/

As most ransomware demand BTC payments and some major corporations stock up on BTC in anticipation of these attacks does anyone feel that they are indirectly investing in the ransomware industry?

[Ultegra134]

The more people or companies that do pay the ransom, the more ransomware there's going to be. If you are a company, why not instead of investing money to stock up with Bitcoin in case an attack happens, aren't companies investing money to have regular backups in case something like that happens?
I really don't get it.

[daringdiscovered]

The word itself, ransomware is not a good thing to do, you might get in jail if you are going to be caught by the police that is responsible on arresting you because of this illegal deeds, that is why you must forget about this investing on ransomware, it is still better if you are going to earn bitcoin through the legal ways, at least you know that you are safe.

[ene1980]

As most ransomware demand BTC payments and some major corporations stock up on BTC in anticipation of these attacks does anyone feel that they are indirectly investing in the ransomware industry?

Looking at the stats it looks like these companies wont study,i really think that they are just dumb,why would they stock up bitcoin anticipating the attack rather than spending time and money in improving their security they are anticipating a hack any time.

[Shinpako09]

As most ransomware demand BTC payments and some major corporations stock up on BTC in anticipation of these attacks does anyone feel that they are indirectly investing in the ransomware industry?

Looking at the stats it looks like these companies wont study,i really think that they are just dumb,why would they stock up bitcoin anticipating the attack rather than spending time and money in improving their security they are anticipating a hack any time.

Indeed a good idea. Those corporations must do this, atleast they have used their money for the company and won't end up in the hand of hackers. The more they will pay ransomware, the more they will pay again and again.

[CryptoBry]

I don't think it is good to link the two scenarios that you are talking about here. Let me give you another example...if you are saving money with the purpose of having to use in case of an emergency...are you somehow praying that you will have an emergency? I don't think so...the logic is not there.

[lonelygrimm]

I think there is a possibility some ransomware is contribution from "Insider" company security software (anti-bacteria virus) with this ransomware creator, almost everytime there is an attack, they're the most one who speak about it and promote every hour about their premium product "that" can prevent the attack. This is just my short analysis/ opinion, but maybe i'm wrong too, people now very smart with technology, it's so easy to learn everything from internet now, with just some hardwork we can learn something new like this case, create a ransomware.

You can't call it invest, this is robbery. You forcing someone / some company to pay something they didn't want, if they stock up some btc for anticipation then they are very dumb, they better use the money for hire a security master, it's so much better.

[aTriz]

According to various research reports including this one from Cybersecurity Ventures, global ransomware is growing at a fast rate (from $325 mil in 2015 to $5 bil in 2017 according to this report)

http://cybersecurityventures.com/ransomware-damage-report-2017-5-billion/

As most ransomware demand BTC payments and some major corporations stock up on BTC in anticipation of these attacks does anyone feel that they are indirectly investing in the ransomware industry?

Well of course if they keep paying the ransomware and not even bothering to fight to save money, the ransomware will become even more and more popular, and it will snowball causing ransomware to be the perfect and most profitable crime to commit, and if you find someone who has some dark secrets to hide or a company that has no time to fight, it will be easy to exploit them.

I think the companies should just use that Bitcoin that they use to pay to remove the ransomware to combat the ransomware and fight it, we shouldn't cave in to these criminals.

[rjbtc2017]

According to various research reports including this one from Cybersecurity Ventures, global ransomware is growing at a fast rate (from $325 mil in 2015 to $5 bil in 2017 according to this report)

http://cybersecurityventures.com/ransomware-damage-report-2017-5-billion/

As most ransomware demand BTC payments and some major corporations stock up on BTC in anticipation of these attacks does anyone feel that they are indirectly investing in the ransomware industry?

In my honest opinion ,They generally invest on bitcoins, since they are buying bitcoins for payment, this sounds new to me, but the price hike of bitcoin, in my own thought is because of the ransom ware. I mean, there is no relationship on how ransomware is big on how bitcoin price is rising.
Investing indirectly is somehow not true to me, because if they really indirectly investing in ransomware does that mean that there are persons behind on that ransomwares? because if they really want to stop that ransomware, they will update their security in order to not get attacked again.
Stocking up bitcoin means investing in bitcoin, anticipation of ransomware and not updating their security  are for me is that indirectly investing in ransomware industry.

[BitWhale]

Here's the funny thing: Yes companies are buying bitcoin to make sure they don't get caught up with ransomware...

What they should be doing is investing in the knowledge & infrastructure to habitually backup their data & protect themselves so they don't have to worry about being such an easy target, though I've heard rumors that with some companies it'd actually be cheaper to pay the ransom due to the large amount of data involved.

That being said, the first ransonware attackers made millions (see Coin.mx), Wannacry make 100k and half of that was rising bitcoin prices, despite the fact that this hack was much farther reaching. The next even less than that...

That's what leads me to believe that people are catching on and that this "ransomware" shit isn't going to be all that effective in the future. If businesses protect themselves and the average user doesn't give a shit, whose going to pay?

All of the "low hanging fruit" have already been exploited and now know how to protect themselves.

[mk4]

Just like what some people said, the ransomware industry will get bigger if companies and corporations continue to pay ransomware. Well you might think, "why are the companies and corporations paying them then?". It's probably because they couldn't afford any downtime on whatever operations that's taking place on their systems. My guess is that it would probably be more costly if they would instead spend alot of time trying to decrypt the ransomware installed in their system.

[Zionatin]

According to various research reports including this one from Cybersecurity Ventures, global ransomware is growing at a fast rate (from $325 mil in 2015 to $5 bil in 2017 according to this report)

http://cybersecurityventures.com/ransomware-damage-report-2017-5-billion/

As most ransomware demand BTC payments and some major corporations stock up on BTC in anticipation of these attacks does anyone feel that they are indirectly investing in the ransomware industry?

Bs. Why would they stock up on Bitcoin just to give it away ? What a load of crap. Anyone who pays randsomware deserve not having their files. If noone paid the randsomware then they would stop making it.

[Andrew1337]

LOL $5 bilion of dollars , thats a huge ammount damn , my friend also was infected by this virus and he paid them , but he never gets uncrypted his files back , biggest scamm from crypto world

[krishnapramod]

Sooner or later questions like these would be asked.

1. Is Bitcoin promoting ransomware?

2. Is ransomware promoting Bitcoin?

The ransomware news definitely brings a whole lot of negativity to Bitcoin. Is it a planned approach to tarnish the image of Bitcoin? We don't know or it might simply be hackers making illegal use of bitcoins pseudonymity. Bitcoin does get attention with such events, but the irony is, it would compel people to stay away from it.

Storing bitcoins expecting ransomware, that's a hilarious approach, doesn't makes any sense. Instead of that spending on making systems invulnerable to viruses like WannaCry would be much more logical.

[posternat]

That is sort of like the black money question. A lot of people believe that because one of the biggest public appearances of Bitcoin early on was all about money laundry. The fact is any at all currencies are used for both good and bad purposes. I don't think ransomware and the Incarnation that you're looking at was really as profitable as it appeared.

[xJuturna]

So I don't really think you can "indirectly" invest in ransomware. The only real way to invest or contribute to it is to either participate in its creation or by falling victim to it and paying whatever said ransom is. That being said you would imagine people with the foresight to be involved with BTC would also use the same foresight to avoid these sort of things.

[taxmanmt5]

Granted a lot of people ended up with screwed up computers because of it but remember most of those people had no idea what Bitcoin was. For a person with zero knowledge of Bitcoin, who may have the only PC they have now inaccessible resetting a PC was a lot easier than trying to learn Bitcoin on your cell phone.

[sylance]

It's already been hinted, but wait until a major terrorist attack is financed through crypto.  Corrupt governments around the world will come together to regulate/ban crypto.

[GMPoison]

So long as companies continue to not prioritize internet security to save money, ransomware will continue to pay off big time.