I don’t travel in the upper echelon of American elites. Just a normal retired senior citizen who spends time on the golf course, in the gym, hiking in the desert and enjoying family and friends.
Yet in my limited circle of friends I now have heard of two Russian cyberattacks with ransom wear demands.
in both cases the victims relate the same responses. Very polite, very professional and not in the least thuggish.
The first case is a businessman who does corporate meetings and travel. The request was for $500,000. The cyber pirates provided responses to his requests for proof of what they had. They had it all. Everything in his entire business files. He said “I refuse to pay $500K”. The response “let me send you to the negotiations desk.” He settled for $350K and was given assurance that the data was returned in its entirety.
The second is more complex. The businessman is a Canadian with 11 plants and 15 distribution centers. His primary business is producing war materials for the Canadian military. Cyber hackers requested $3 million in ransom. As a defense contractor he was prevented by law from paying ransoms. He has spent $1 million in lawyers and security consultants to respond to the demands.
This causes me to consider the degree of this in the everyday business of this country. How much cash is being drained from our businesses and being transferred to Russia in the form of cryptocurrency?
Is this flowing to the Russian government and will the cyber attacks, as Biden said, increase and paralyze the infrastructure in this country?
What will we face in the next months?
