Discussion
I dunno if people remember the ransomware economy thread I had on Twitter years ago, but one of the things I covered is all the “ransomware recovery” vendors who secretly pay ransomware groups and pretend they magically decrypt the data. They’re middle men for crime basically.
Anyway, one cybersecurity vendor (MonsterCloud) has finally had an arrest over it. Thread follows.
I wrote a whole blog (several, in fact) about the need to break the ransomware economy cycle and still believe it’s the most urgent and important thing governments can do to protect civil society.
Having orgs pay ransoms, including via sham cybersecurity vendors, is directly harming society.
Maybe once the AI bubble pops, we can get back to having serious conversations about the harm the status quo has caused.
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So @ProPublica actually outed this vendor, MonsterCloud, 7 years ago. Everybody knew. There’s a load of other cybersecurity vendors too.
Vendors also do things like buy stolen data (at scale) from criminals, exploits etc.
The ransomware economy is a huge business and that’s why so many security vendors lobby to keep the status quo. Ironically the people making the least bank are the ransomware groups themselves.
https://features.propublica.org/ransomware/ransomware-attack-data-recovery-firms-paying-hackers/