The number of malware and hacking incidents involving bitcoin has increased over the years drastically. Ransomware has been one of the new trends, where the world saw a surge in malware attacks where the hackers successfully infiltrated systems belonging to individuals and big corporations, encrypting all the files that were present on their hard disks. These cybercriminals later demanded ransom in bitcoin to decrypt the data.
The security agencies have been working round the clock to prevent such attacks, but given the fact that these hackers demand for ransom in bitcoins, the transactions becomes harder to track the identity of these perpetrators. Even if the law enforcement officials successfully track and apprehend these cybercriminals they won’t be able to do much about the data that has already been encrypted on victims’ computers.
According to an agent with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Joseph Bonavolonta, the only solution for those who are affected by these malware attacks, especially Cryptowall and Cryptolocker is to pay the ransom demanded by perpetrators in order to save and regain access to the data. Joseph Bonavolanta is the acting special agent at the FBI Boston Office in charge of CYBER and Counterintelligence Program. His statement was recently published on The Security Ledger, an independent security news website.
Special Agent Joseph Bonavolonta was one of the speakers at the Cyber Security Summit 2015 which was organized in Boston’s Back Bay Events Center. Some of the other speakers and panel included Tom Resau from W2 Communications, Eric Yunghans from Palo Alto Networks, Curt Dukes – Chief of Information Assurance Directorate at National Security Agency and Junaid Islam from Vidder Inc.
In the statement, Joseph Bonavolonta assured that the FBI is always there for the companies or individuals who might be victims of hackers and his advice for companies to pay the ransom was only to ensure the safety of valuable information/data held hostage by cybercriminals using certain advanced malware.