It is not just Ransomware either. The phishing attacks and outright breach of emails for nefarious purposes all need to be pursued and dealt with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By\u00a0Mitchell Clark<\/a> – In\u00a0the past 10 years, ransomware<\/strong> has become inescapable. All kinds of institutions have been targeted, from the\u00a0schools children go to<\/a>, to\u00a0fuel<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0medical infrastructure<\/a>. A\u00a0report from the US Treasury estimates<\/a>\u00a0there were over half a billion dollars in ransomware payouts in the first half of 2021 alone. Law enforcement has struggled to get a handle on the situation, with many groups operating for years with no apparent fear of repercussions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This year, federal law enforcement decided to try something new. In April, the Department of Justice\u00a0created the Ransomware<\/strong> and Digital Extortion Task Force<\/a>\u00a0in a move to prioritize the \u201cdisruption, investigation, and prosecution of ransomware<\/strong> and digital extortion activity.\u201d The task force is supposed to help share information between DOJ departments, as well as work with outside and foreign agencies. In the months since, it\u2019s made some impressive prosecutions, but they\u2019re just a sliver of the overall \u2014 and the bigger picture remains maddeningly unclear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the first publicized wins for the group came in June, when the\u00a0Department of Justice said<\/a>\u00a0the group was handling the case of an individual alleged to be partially responsible for\u00a0the malware suite known as Trickbot<\/a>, which could help expose a system to a ransomware attack. Days after that announcement came an even bigger win:\u00a0the DOJ announced<\/a>\u00a0it had seized back $2.3 million of the $4.4 million ransom paid by oil company Colonial Pipeline, and that the task force had coordinated the efforts. Then, in October,\u00a0its biggest win yet<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the arrests of a few alleged members of REvil, a hacking group, by European police forces, and the seizure of over $6 million in funds the department says were linked to ransomware<\/strong> payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, the sheer volume of attacks means a handful of prosecutions is unlikely to make a difference. Prosecutors need the threat of law enforcement action to scare criminals away from ransomware <\/strong>\u2014 and some experts say the scheme is still too lucrative for criminals to give up. Read On:<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is not just Ransomware either. The phishing attacks and outright breach of emails for nefarious purposes all need to be pursued and dealt with. By\u00a0Mitchell Clark – In\u00a0the past 10 years, ransomware has become inescapable. All kinds of institutions …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[636],"tags":[637],"class_list":["post-46359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ransomware","tag-ransomware"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberconservices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberconservices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberconservices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberconservices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberconservices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberconservices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberconservices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberconservices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberconservices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberconservices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}