If this policy expanded to all UK banks, it could plausibly make the UK a less i...

Gigachad · on Nov 30, 2022

I believe Australia is moving towards making it illegal to pay crypto ransoms. Cybercrime has gone absolutely wild over the last few years and cutting off the money tap should do some good.

TheGhostOfBoris · on Nov 30, 2022

Here in Blighty, paying a ransom is legal per se.......

.....but making payments to a sanctioned country or a terrorist organisation is very illegal (as I suspect it is in most of the world).

For this reason, any organisation obeying the law will refuse to pay the ransom.

richardwhiuk · on Nov 30, 2022

I imagine you'll always be able to use something like Western Union to make such payments.

amluto · on Nov 30, 2022

At least in principal, with a service like Western Union, an actual human or other KYC’d entity needs to collect the money at the other end. If you run a $100M ransomware campaign, a very enthusiastic prosecutor is fairly likely to arrange to arrest people well before $100M gets cashed out, and without perfect opsec, you have a problem.

And Western Union respects sanctions.

richardwhiuk · on Nov 30, 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Union#Controversies

Not so much.

amluto · on Nov 30, 2022

I did say “in principle” for a reason (although I did misspell it).

That being said, with a large enough fraud campaign, law enforcement really could target Western Union’s users.