Beers and Bitcoin

Today I had the pleasure to attend a luncheon with a security expert and research analyst as a keynote speaker for an incident response (IR) firm speaking to a local insurance board. An incident response firm is a cyber security company that responds to ransomware attacks for SMB and larger corporate/ SLED organizations that have fallen victim to this type of online attack. Somehow someway they figure out how to get in, and I learned that one of the first thing that they search for is the insurance policy because if they find that they know how much they can get for certain because the policy has to pay out if they have that type of insurance (which most financial / government organizations are required to by law making them easy targets).

Anyhow it was such a great story, this fellow was working in IR at the time working negotiating with a very persistent ransomware group (forget the name will add) that wanted to only be paid in Monero. Long story short regulations in the US won't allow it because some big wig in DC didn't allow it whatever whatever. They started negotiations with the hacker group and it kept going on, and on, and on, and on. For two weeks the negotiations went on and they were relentless and wouldn't give in. They were demanding an extra 20% because they said that not being paid in Monero would impact their business operations, but legally the policy is not allowed to pay out in Monero only Bitcoin and also the insurance company was not willing to pay an extra 20% because it was beyond the policy limits. Many times they spoke on the phone, exchanged emails, over and over to no end. UNTIL one day the speaker said it was a Friday two weeks in (he was also Russian) he leveled with the hacker demanding the extra 20% and said something to the extent of "I am tired, weary, I haven't slept in 2 days and I am very stressed out. I want to be done with this and enjoy my weekend. How about we just forget the 20% and i'll buy you a case of beer (he said the name of some distinct russian beer he knew the russian hacker would know)". This threw the hacker off his guard and he laughed. They negotiator and the hacker both had a good laugh about it, and the hacker agreed and said "You know what you made me laugh and I liked that, we will waive the 20% send the payment and have a good weekend".

In this case that case of beer was worth $300,000 which would have been the extra 20% the russian hacker group was asking for because they wouldn't pay the ransom in Monero. It really was a great story, and I loved every second of it. I have more stories from the lunch with very interesting things i've learned in this new space I am very happy to be working in. For the first time in a long time I'm truly excited about what i'm doing, and it just so happens to be very relevant to Bitcoin and bitcoin is used in my line of work every day. Its a lot of fun, and I am learning so much and I hope that you enjoyed the story as much as I did. Stay tuned for more.