[2016-10-23] London Banks Stockpile Bitcoin To Meet Cyber Attack Demands

[doomloop]

London Banks Stockpile Bitcoin To Meet Cyber Attack Demands
It is not the first time major banks plan to stockpile Bitcoin to thwart ransomware attacks. Even though that money should be spent on improving the IT department, financial institutions tend to take the easier option. Rolling over and paying the Bitcoin ransom will only invite more trouble down the line, though. But for now, London banks want to buy up Bitcoin in the case of a cyber attack.
http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/10/23/london-banks-stockpile-bitcoin-meet-cyber-attack-demands/

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[Carlton Banks]

Citation needed, christ.



These people must be astonishingly unaware if they really believe speculating on a possible value of a ransom is more effective than simply backing the data up, lol. What kind of small time "London Bank" cannot achieve such a limited feat of joined-up thinking?


If this turns out to be a major bank of any description, deposit holders should look carefully at switching providers. Any bank capable of such public incompetence in respect of security as this can expect to get robbed one way or another.

[aigeezer]

The article is not news, imho. It is just noise:

1. "For now, it remains unclear as to which banks are starting to stockpile Bitcoin."

2. "banks are planning to stockpile Bitcoin" (Note the changed phrase "plan to stockpile". Nobody has actually done anything, apparently, let alone "start to stockpile" or "stockpile" as the first quote and headline suggest).

The second item even included a link to another fluff piece on how to buy BTC.

Who? What? When? Why? How? Where? - journalism is not rocket surgery.   



 

[daneranon89]

IMHO, This piece of news need more proof. There are some Crypto sites that publish shit for the sake of content and for attention. I don't wish to name them and start another debate. I ask all the users to double check before sharing such news. If this news is true, then Banks have realized the value of bitcoin and they are investing into it with this reason !

[TraderTimm]

Citation needed, christ.



These people must be astonishingly unaware if they really believe speculating on a possible value of a ransom is more effective than simply backing the data up, lol. What kind of small time "London Bank" cannot achieve such a limited feat of joined-up thinking?


If this turns out to be a major bank of any description, deposit holders should look carefully at switching providers. Any bank capable of such public incompetence in respect of security as this can expect to get robbed on way or another.

Precisely -- [ Citation Needed ] indeed.

You're correct, any proper setup would have off-site backups that weren't part of the bank's day-to-day network just for security purposes. Most encryption malware can look for network shares, so having active stores elsewhere available from a loan officers machine would be inadvisable.

Looks like a slow news day piece...

[tmfp]

This "story" was also in the Guardian yesterday, with a few random extra "facts" thrown in and the whole thing conflated with the recent Ddos attack on Dyn.

The Guardian starts off with

experts say

then

a leading IT expert.

This appears to be 'futurist' Dr. Simon Moores who, amongst other things, is mad keen on the Tweet Machine (and quite funny too).

Why have this series of articles have appeared this weekend hung off his quote?
He mentions (and pins) a tweet

A passing remark on risk makes a #bitcoin splash - #infosec #DDoS -

(referring to the Guardian article)

Quite what that passing remark was and when is unclear, but an earlier tweet provides a clue

Hearing from @metpoliceuk that #cryptolocker #ransomware made more money last year than #Yahoo 😒 @eCrime_Congress #ecrime2016
 

 

[marcus_of_augustus]

Although I seriously doubt the veracity of the claims it is worth pondering for a moment because it offers a few interesting scenarios.

It could be the IT dept. in a bank who has decided the management are just friggin nutz for not investing in bitcoin and have decided to buy a position in btc under guise of "in case we get hit with ransoware", like CIO of UBS who is very pro-bitcoin. OR it could be some trading desk people who know they are absolutely not allowed to talk about bitcoin, only blockchain, let alone invest in it but also think for long time survival of bank it may be necessary to have some kind of hedge in bitcoin, so first things first is to open any kind of position, so why not create cover story with IT dept. "for ransomware bitcoin payments hedge" ... now they have a hedge versus IT attack risks and also an unrealised, unstated hedge against financial movements by proxy. A backdoor way for banks to open up trading positions in bitcoin without "buying bitcoin not blockchain".

[Karartma1]

You guys fail at recognizing that there are people who still ruin fortunes by simply opening "emails". Companies spend so much money on IT and then they fail at the most simple thing: choosing their own employees.

For what is worth I can confirm that "companies" are piling up bitcoins to pay for cryptolocker's encryption. I don't know about banks though

[Kakmakr]

I would be too ashamed to tell my customers that I am taking their money to pay for security flaws that was exploited in the banks system. They have another motivation to do this, and in my opinion this is just a way to take a stab at creating negative press for Bitcoin. They simply shift the blame for their own security inadequacies to Bitcoin to deflect the attention from themselves.

This will not be the first time that the internet would be used to spread misinformation about Bitcoin. Ransomware existed long before Bitcoin came to the scene, and they used all the other payment methods before Bitcoin. ^hmmmm^