The White House brought together dozens of countries, including France and Germany, as well as representatives of major technology companies earlier this week for a two-day summit aimed at finding solutions to the global problem of ransomware. “It’s really a global problem,” said a senior US administration official, citing for example the attacks against Costa Rica, Montenegro, or the city of Palermo in Italy.
Ransomware Acceleration
“We are seeing the pace and sophistication of ransomware attacks increasing faster than our protection and disruption efforts,” he added. In September, the second largest school district in the United States was hit by ransomware. In a separate report, the US Treasury Department estimates that ransomware attacks were on the rise in 2021 and puts payments directed at cybercriminals at $1.2 billion (about as much as euros), against only 416 million dollars the previous year.
This is the second international seminar against ransomware organized by the House, after that of last year. According to the Associated Press news agency, Crowdstrike, Mandiant, the Cyber Threat Alliance, Microsoft, the Cybersecurity Coalition, Palo Alto, Flexxon, SAP, Siemens and even Tata participated in the event. Last year, the private sector was not invited. “As we know, ransomware is a problem that knows no borders,” the administration official said. “And it only gets harder,” he added.
Threat without borders
White House officials were asked about Russia, a country not invited to the summit and where many ransomware gangs are based. The problem is “less Russia than how we make it harder, more expensive and riskier for ransomware actors to operate,” they replied. “This is a threat without borders, we must tackle it in a way that ignores borders,” they also said.
The US Treasury report estimates that three-quarters of ransomware attacks last year were linked to Russian-speaking groups. The United States finally underlined the close link between ransomware and crypto-currencies, which makes it easier to carry out transactions, pointing for example to the link between one of the largest mixers, this service supposed to blur the traceability of the blockchain of a cryptocurrency, with laundering linked to North Korea.