Russian Ransomware Group Claims Credit for Cyber Attack on D C Metro Police newsweek.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newsweek.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
EXPLAINER: No ransomware silver bullet, crooks out of reach
FRANK BAJAK, AP Technology Writer
April 29, 2021
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FILE - In this April 2, 2021, file photo, Washington Metropolitan Police Department chief Robert Contee speaks during a news conference in Washington. Political hand-wringing in Washington over Russia s hacking of federal agencies and meddling in U.S. politics has mostly overshadowed a worsening digital scourge with a far broader wallop: crippling and dispiriting extortionary ransomware attacks by cybercriminal mafias. All the while, ransomware gangsters have become more brazen and cocky as they put more and more lives and livelihoods at risk. This week, one syndicate threatened to make available to local criminal gangs data they say they stole from the Washington, D.C., metro police on informants.Alex Brandon/AP
The United States government and industry officials confronting an epidemic of ransomware attacks are zeroing in on cryptocurrency regulation as the key to combating the scourge, sources familiar with the work of a public-private task force tells the Reuters news agency.
In a ransomware attack, hackers freeze the computers of a target and demand a payoff.
In a report on Thursday, the panel of experts is expected to call for a far more aggressive tracking of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. While those have won greater acceptance among investors over the past year, they remain the lifeblood of ransomware operators and other criminals who face little risk of prosecution in much of the world.