Daily Archives: 26 June 2018

Ransomware and Government Entities

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The Wall Street Journal, in an article about ransomware being used to hack city (and other) computer systems, asked the question Should Cities Pay?

Not only no, cities (and others) should not pay, but no2.

Aside from paying the ransom being an act of cowardice, it aids and abets the criminals—which is amoral, if not yet a felony.

Sure, it costs more in the moment to refuse and rebuild, but what costs are saved by not telling the hacker world that the city will gladly pay the ransom and so be hacked repeatedly?  What’s the cost to other, similarly situated, cities and towns (and public libraries) when one gladly aids and abets?

What’s the excuse, today, with ransomware so well known, for cities not hardening their systems against this hack (and other hacks) before the hack occurs?

Protecting US Technology

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The Trump administration is moving toward a set of rules that would heavily restrict the People’s Republic of China’s ability to acquire American technology-developing companies and American technology.

Of course, there are objections to protecting our stuff.

Industry groups…are mainly concerned that the export controls could negatively affect their businesses by preventing them from using their technological edge.

If such groups were truly serious about this, they’d be truly serious about hardening their member companies’ facilities against hacking.

And

While many object to the investment restrictions, they are seen as having less practical impact because Chinese investment has fallen off so drastically.

This is short-sighted to the point of being disingenuously so.  The PRC’s investment has fallen off because, through theft, hacking, and their extortionate requirement of “sharing” technology and inserting backdoors into core software as a condition of doing business in the PRC, they’ve largely caught up.  When we get our edge back, the PRC’s “investment” efforts will pick back up.  The restriction objectors know this.