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Comment by pxmpxm | Hacker News Reader

> call from an FBI agent. “Don’t pay,” the agent said. “We’ve found someone who can crack the encryption.”

Weird, you'd think this would be the exact time for some three letter agency to apply the xkcd $5 wrench approach:

Black bag rendition one of the principals, beat the private key out of him and publicize the entire thing. You only have to do it once, really.

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The malware authors are in Russia, how's the FBI going to go after them?

duh, a longer wrench

> duh, a longer wrench

Would that make it a $10 wrench?

Or a wrēnch..

Australia is currently trying to do this with revil over the Medibank breach. It will be interesting to see the outcome.

No it won't. We are totally toothless here. A few ignorant politicians trying to score points by sounding tough in the media isn't going to make any difference.

Once a case is raised in the system they're flagged for Interpol and a European equivalent. It makes retaining them at a border simpler. There's no downside to filing a case and there might be an upside in the future.

Of our three-letter agencies, I'd really much prefer the domestic federal investigative arm of the DOJ not become comfortable beating secrets out of criminals.

They don’t have the criminals to beat secrets out of, they have a cooperative non-criminal researcher who is trying to help willingly and you guys want to beat them with a wrench because …. reasons.

I think it should be law that paying ransomware is a crime since it only makes these ransomware people more bold, and rich.

Isn't canada instituting it? Doing that would be the long term optimal solution, especially when combined with the $5 wrench.

The Japanese made it illegal for victims to pay protection money to the Yakuza for this very reason!

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