In a mutual statement that the White House issued, it has been acknowledged by the Counter Ransomware Initiative’s members that the ransomware attacks could be facilitated by crypto across the globe. Members representing Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirate, the United States, along with others included in the international community, participated in a meeting which was held virtually on the 13th and 14th of October. In that conference, they debated about the mounting world-level security threat which is caused by ransomware.
The U.S. scenario of ransomware
Just in the United States, such attack types have raised devastation during 2021. As reported earlier, hundreds out of firms based in the U.S. have been hit by bad actors as they utilized crypto as an instrument to acquire monetary compensation. The ransom that these groups have demanded in the form of Bitcoin (BTC), as well as the other cryptos, comprises millions in U.S. dollars. Additionally, such teams threatened the functional stability of prominent infrastructure firms like “Colonial Pipeline.” The oil which is circulated through the western coast of the U.S. is to a great extent controlled by the firm. The operations of this company were stopped during recent June because the hackers invaded it and claimed more than $2M in crypto payment as a ransom to release it.
In this scenario, an upsurge has been witnessed by the Counter Ransomware Initiate in such attacks over multiple sectors, necessitating some common priorities, complementary efforts, and urgent action to minimize the risk. The members of the respective meeting determined that some effective response should be given for such incidents to prevent the manipulation of financial institutions and the growing misconduct in the crypto space. 4 complementary moves have been supported by the members of the meeting to be taken in the fields of disruption of the hackers to be accountable for their criminal operations, confronting illegal finance, diplomacy, and network resilience.
The international community and the attempts to restrict attackers from utilizing crypto
The propagation of the rules-based behavior will be the first action to be taken by the Counter Ransomware Initiative to push the countries to put a prohibition over bad actors from functioning in the respective territories. In the statement, no particular country was mentioned. However, some speculations were made regarding North Korea and Russia to enable these operations. For the elimination of ransomware attacks, the initiative’s members will try to force VASPs (virtual asset service providers) to decrease risks linked with crypto activities and increase cooperation within the crypto industry for sharing of the relevant information.
