> Some, including the U.S. Treasury, have promoted the idea of making it illegal to pay a ransom, though the idea has not gained widespread support.
That's probably the only solution, besides the obvious ones like actually protecting the systems.
That's probably the only solution, besides the obvious ones like actually protecting the systems.
But I would hope that financial pressure - like insurance companies not insuring unprotected systems - would have the same result without the need for regulation.
Windows is not inherently insecure. Executing a malicious program would work just as well under Linux. (Presumed) technical superiority does not help when it's basically social engineering all the way. Ephemeral VMs don't help too much, either. So I highly doubt this would reduce windows market share in any significant way.
The biggest reason is to starve the attackers of incentive and resources. If you get 10 million dollars from an attack you can hire 10 people for a year to work on more attacks.
But it's unlikely that companies will change anything besides reporting in their practices. People are bad at evaluating tail risks of 0.001% chance happening in their lifetime.
That would be true if in 2021 the alternatives were more secure than Windows, which I doubt.