Bitcoin-Powered Extortion — An Emerging Global Industry
By: Bitmint - Ai Powered Cyber Innovation
Tags: Ransomware, Bitcoin, Information Security, Crypto, Cybersecurity

Given a problem of size X — would you solve it paying half-X? It’s a no-brainer. And if you can get rid of this X-size problem by paying 1%-X then much more so. This premise together with bitcoin anonymity gives rise to a new flourishing industry unique to cyber space. Everyone has some things they would wish to keep private, and would consider embarrassing if made public. Today those “things” are written as sequences of hackable bits. This puts each and everyone of us as a target for the growing number of cyber extortion agents who claim the power to afflict an X-pain while offering to solve it with 1%-X pay off. Who would resist?

We all have to trust somebody some time. We all have around us individuals who are in possession of embrassing information we would rather keep private. Increasingly those individuals are lured by a growing number of extortion agents: pass the “secret” to us, and get a cut of the extortion pay off we (not you!) will extract from the target. The money is easy and plentiful. And the problem will only grow because virtually everyone is vulnerable to privacy violation, and not all the people who know something embarrssing about you are your friends — for now and ever more.

The most discussed aspect of the emerging Bitcoin Powered Extortion industry is ransomware. The target are business entities. For them the decision is easy. The damage they are facing, if they choose resistance is X. The attacker offers them a way out by paying 1%-X. Easy decision. All that the extortion agents need to do is (1) not be too greedy — keep the ransom amount reasonable, and (2) not re-attack a former victim. Both are easy. There are so many fresh targets, why re-violate? There are so many extoriton opporunitiies, the extortionists can afford a discounted extortion fee.

What is missing is societal recognition of this mushrooming challenge. This reality is ignored. The response of the IT security industry is to build better fences around the data, to keep the extorionsts out. It’s an obvious defense, but it is like in healthcare: no doubt that the best thing to do is to stay healthy. The question is what to do when you get sick anyway. Same here: public facing databases are fenced off in proportion to the defensive skills of their IT mavens, which means that at some point a smarter hacker will come along and get in.

This recognition is the fundamental revolution of strategy required in our industry: yes, we would do our best to keep the hackers out, but we must assume that sooner or later they would get in, and it is there, inside our data base, where we need to engage our attackers and win the fight!

Attackers either steal data, or encrypt data. We propose to our clients: fight data theft via BitGlove — a new technology that denies a data thief the benefit of his stolen data. As to ransom-motivated encryption, the essential technoogy solution is a sequential history trail. Keep a record of all changes in a time-sequence off the grid fashion, to allow for “rewind” option to before the attack.

The menace of the bitcoin-powered exotrtion indsutry is way beyond ransomware. We are all targets and we all need to pitch in. First — bitcoin. Regardless of the debate about bitcoin per se, as long as it runs, society must be able to mark extorion collecting accounts as pariahs and deny them any further participation in the bitcoin trade. It may be started by some privacy organization publishing a ledger of such extorion collection accounts, lobbying for their exclusion. Alas, this is not likely to solve this growing problem. Eventually governments will have to intervene. Surrender to bitcoin-powered Extortion may be made illegal, or at least, hiding the pay-off may be made illegal. But the industry will keep growing because its X-1%X premise is so powerful. When it becomes pervasive enough, bitcoin itself will become illegal, which cannot happen fast enough — opening the door for a society-benefitting digital money, which is what BitMint is working toward.