The Most Expensive Ransoms Ever Paid

Dive into the world of high-stakes negotiations with “The Most Expensive Ransoms Ever Paid.” This gripping episode uncovers shocking true stories of billion-dollar kidnappings, corporate extortions, and covert rescue missions. We explore who paid, why they paid, and the hidden consequences of these massive ransom deals—offering a rare glimpse into the shadowy side of global crime and power.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome curious minds to beyond infographics. We're your shortcut to
being genuinely well informed.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
That's right, And today we're starting with the phrase everyone
knows right, a king's ransom exactly?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
It just instantly paints a picture, doesn't it. Overflowing treasure chests,
desperate situations.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Huge stakes. But what does it actually mean today? I mean,
has the meaning shifted?

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Or maybe the cost itself.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
That's the core question we're tackling because in our hyper
connected world, ransom looks well, it looks very different.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Sometimes it really does. It's gone far beyond just gold
and jewels.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Absolutely so today on beyond infographics, we're not just glancing
at the surface. We're diving deep into the surprisingly complex
world of ransom.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
You're going to trace it all the way back literally
the price paid to free captured kings, you know, rated cities, and.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Then jump forward to like modern tycoons held hostage for
staggering sums.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
And then the really big shift today's digital battlegrounds, invisible
attackers demanding fortunes for data they've locked up.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
It's a huge journey. We'll explore the common threads because
some things like human motivations. They don't change much.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Do they not. Fundamentally No, greed, fear power, they're always there,
but the methods, the scale radically different.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
By the end of this you'll get a much clearer
picture of what really shapes the price of freedom, whether
it was a thousand years ago or you know, right now.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
So, yeah, settle in. It's going to be quite a
ride through history and into the present.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
And hey, if you find this whole exploration fascinating, if
it gets you thinking, we'd really appreciate it. If you
could leave us a five star rating.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, and maybe share beyond infographics with a friend. It
genuinely helps us reach more people who are curious about
this stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Okay, let's do this part one. Where did that phrase
a king's ransom actually come from the historical roots?

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, it's fascinating because it wasn't just like a metaphor
back then. It was literal. In medieval warfare, particularly right.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Like an Age of Knights and castles.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Exactly, capturing a high ranking night or a noble alive
on the battlefield was often way more valuable than killing them.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Oh okay, so it was an economic calculation almost pretty much.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, it was baked into the whole system of chivalric warfare.
It didn't just defeat your enemy. You captured an asset,
a high value individual you could trade for a hefty sum.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
But in the middle of a chaotic battle, how did
they even know who is valuable? Everyone's covered in armor.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Ah, that's where heraldry comes in. Those coats of arms,
the crests, the banners, they weren't just fancy decorations.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
They were like ID tags essentially.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yes, yeah, a very visible, very public ID tag. It
shouted out your family, your rank, your status, and by extension,
your potential ransom value. It was a kind of medieval
credit rating system painted right on your shield.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Wow, a credit rating you were in battle. That's something else. Yeah, okay,
So let's talk about some actual kings and their price tags.
King Louis the ninth of France twelve fifty a d.
What happened there, right, silly?

Speaker 2 (03:10):
He was captured during the Seventh Crusade. Things went badly
wrong for his army in Egypt, lots of illness, military.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Defeats, so he ends up a prisoner of the Mamluks exactly.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
The manlooks of the Bari line, a huge blow for France.
Obviously they're king, a crusader king captured.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
And the price what did it cost to get a
saint king back?

Speaker 2 (03:28):
The demand was around eighty thousand bizants. These were gold coins,
pretty widely used.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Then. Eighty thousand gold coins sounds like a fortune.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
It was definitely a lot of money. Yeah, estimates suggest
it could pay for like food transport supplies for maybe
forty four hundred soldiers for two full years.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Okay, that puts it in perspective a huge logistical cost.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Huge, But interestingly, contemporary sources don't always describe it as
you know, insanely astronomical. It was big, but perhaps within
the realms of possibility for a kingdom.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Not like say, bankrupting the nation entirely.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Maybe not quite. It's worth contrasting. For instance, Saladin had
earlier promised a tribute of two hundred thousand bezants that
never got paid. So eighty thousand, while massive, wasn't necessarily
the highest theoretical things you're floating around.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
And how did they pay it all at once?

Speaker 2 (04:17):
No, it was actually paid in two installments. They released
some of the army after the first payment, and then
Louis the rest after the second is quite transactional.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
A structured payment plan for a king, okay, But the
one everyone really thinks of when they hear king's ransom
has to be Richard the Lionheart right, England eleven ninety two.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Oh, absolutely, Richard the sext His story is the reason
that phrase stuck so powerfully. He wasn't even captured in battle,
which is interesting, right.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
He was coming back from the Third Crusade.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Exactly trying to get home over land in disguise actually,
but he was recognized and captured by Duke Leopold the
fifth of Austria. Leopold had a grudge. He blamed Richard
for his cousin's death.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
So part political revenge, part mass of payday.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Definitely both. Leebol handed him over to the Holy Roman
Emperor Henry the six, who then set the price.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
And that price was the legendary one.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
That was the one, a truly staggering one hundred and
fifty thousand marks. That's about sixty five thousand pounds of.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Silver, okay, sixty five thousand pounds of silver. How much
was that in terms of like the English economy, it.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Was almost unbelievable. Estimates say it represented two, maybe even
three years of the entire income of the English crown.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Three years of the whole country's revenue just gone pretty much.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
To raise it, they had to impose this massive kingdom
wide tax is basically equivalent to a quarter twenty five
percent of every single man's annual income in England.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
A twenty five percent tax on everyone, just to free
the king.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yes, and it still took two incredibly hard years to
gather all that money. People were bled dry.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
And you mentioned earlier this links to robin Hood.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
That's a huge part of the context. Yeah, the legends
of Robinhood fighting against the greedy Sheriff of Nottingham and
Prince John who was ruling while Richard was away and
frankly wasn't too keen on raising the ransom Quickly, those
stories gained massive traction, partly because of the very real,
very harsh economic suffering caused by these taxes. It wasn't
just abstract tyranny. It was a direct consequence of freeing

(06:12):
the king.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Wow. So the legend has deep roots in this specific
historical economic crisis. Trying to put that one hundred and
fifty thousand marks into modern money must be almost impossible.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
It's incredibly difficult. Yeah, you can look at the price
of silver. Maybe get a figure like, I don't know,
thirteen pointy eight million dollars based on twenty fifteen prices,
which sounds kind.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Of low actually for three years of national income.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Exactly because the buying power was totally different. Some economic
historians argue that before the huge influx of silver from
the Americas changed everything, the actual value what that silver
could command in terms of goods, labor, land, it could
be equivalent to over three billion dollars today three billion.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Okay, that sounds more like a king's ransom, right.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
It shows how much value was concentrated in the monarch.
His capture wasn't just inconvenient. It was a potential national catastrophe,
paralyzing the kingdom financially and politically.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
An existential threat. Almost did these prices keep going up?
What about King John the Second of France? He was
captured later thirteen fifty six Battle of Poitiers, Ah.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
John the Good. Yes, his ransom was set at three
million crowns. Another absolute enormous figure.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Three million crowns. How do we even grasp that?

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Okay, here's a way to think about it. Maybe more
tangible than just crowns. For that kind of money, in
that era, you could buy roughly one hundred thousand horses.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
One hundred thousand horses.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah. Now, if you try a rough modern comparison, say
an average horse today costs maybe five thousand dollars, that
calculation for one hundred and sixteen thousand odd horses gets
you somewhere around five hundred and eighty four million and
twenty fifteen dollars. It's a rough estimate, but it gives
you a sense of scale.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
And we need to remember horses back then weren't just
like pets or for racing.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Oh, absolutely not. A horse was vital. It was transportation,
it was farm labor, think plowing fields, It was logistics
for trade and armies. And critically, it was a weapon
of war. Cavalry was decisive.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
So one hundred thousand horses represents immense economic power, agricultural capacity,
military strength.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Precisely, it's a measure of a kingdom's ability to function,
to defend itself, to project power. Losing that much potential
capital was crippling.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
It's just mind boggling. And speaking of mind boggling ransoms
and tragic outcomes, we have to talk about Ottawalpa, the
last Inca emperor, fifteen thirty two, The Room of Gold.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, Ottawalpa's story is it's one of the most famous
and perhaps most heartbreaking examples, captured by Francisco Pizzarro. And
get this, only one hundred and sixty nine Spanish conquistadors.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
One hundred and sixty nine guys capture and emperor.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Well, context is crucial. Ottawappa was actually escorted by something
like six thousand Inca attendants, but they were largely unarmed,
and the Inca Empire itself was just coming out of
a really brutal civil war, a succession battle. It was weakened, vulnerable.
Pizarro exploited that ruthlessly.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
So Ottawapa is captured and he makes this incredible.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Offer, desperate to save himself and his empire. Yeah, he
offered to fill a large room the accounts say about
twenty two feet long, seventeen feet wide maybe eight feet high,
once with gold objects and twice with silver objects, all
within two months.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Fill a room with gold. That sounds like something out
of a fairy tale.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
It does, and the Incas, showing incredible loyalty and resourcefulness,
actually delivered. They brought ornaments, statues, plates, jewelry enough to
fulfill the promise. Estimates are around thirteen thousand pounds of
gold and twenty six thousand pounds of silver.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
And the Spanish just melted it all down, all that artistry.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yep, melted it into bars into billions, easier to divide,
easier to transport, and crucially easier for the Spanish crown
to take its royal fifth tax.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
What a cultural tragedy. How much was it actually worth?
People throw around huge number.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
The estimates are all over the place, honestly, from maybe
twelve million dollars to over two billion dollars in modern terms.
Part of the confusion is that fill a room sounds
like solid gold, right yeah, But it was objects, lots
of air between statues, jewelry, not solid bars. So the
actual volume of metal was less than you might imagine

(10:06):
just hearing a roomful. And of course five hundred years
of retelling tends to inflate the story quite a bit.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Right, the legend grows. Some estimates of the gold amount
are wildly different, aren't they.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Massively You see figures from maybe seven or eight tons
up to like one hundred and seven hundred and eighty
tons of gold, which is just impossible. Total world goal
production in the entire fifteen hundreds was maybe thirty six tons,
So while it was a huge amount, it was likely
at the much lower end of those legendary figures.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Still a fortune, though. But even paying this colossal ransom
didn't save Aldoholpa.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
No, that's the ultimate tragedy. He delivered the treasure and
months later the Spanish executed him anyway, on fabricated charges.
It was never just about the gold for Pizarro. It
was about breaking the Inca power structure, seizing control.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
A brutal lesson that paying doesn't always guarantee safety.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
Not at all. Yeah, and there's this kind of weird
historical echo. Some people suggest that a noticeable proportion of
the gold circulating in Joey today might actually trace its
or urgins back to the Andes, back to that melted
down Inca treasure.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Wow, tangible link back to that moment. Okay, let's shift
from individual rulers to collective ransoms. The Danegeld paying off
the Vikings. This was basically nationwide extortion right from eight
forty five to ten fourteen, A d or so exactly.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
The Danegeld literally Dane gold or Dane tax was just
vast sums of silver paid by rulers in England and Francia,
primarily to Viking fleets to get them to go away,
to stop them from raiding and pillaging.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
So protection money on a massive scale.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
Absolutely like an eight forty five Charles, the Bald King
of West Francia paid seven thousand pounds of silver to
a Viking fleet just to spare Paris. Imagine the calculation,
pay this fortune or watch your capital burn.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
And the Anglo Saxons and England paid even more, didn't
they over a longer period, Oh much more.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
There was a recurring nightmare for them over about fifty years.
Estimates suggest they paid maybe two hundred and fifty thousand
pounds of silver in total, huge individual payments to ten
thousand pounds in nine hundred and ninety one twenty one
pounds in ten fourteen.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
Where did they even get that much silver?

Speaker 2 (12:03):
It was brutal raised through national taxes hitting everyone. But
also they leaned heavily on monasteries and churches, which were
often very wealthy landowners, essentially coercing them into contributing massive amounts.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
So it sounds like an early version of the modern dilemma,
do you pay off attackers to make them stop?

Speaker 2 (12:21):
It's a definite historical parallel. Yeah, it kind of do
we negotiate with terrorist's question, but centuries earlier.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
But the key difference, the really depressing part, was.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
The vikings usually came back paying them off once, rarely
bought lasting piece if anything, had just showed them you
had money and were willing to pay. It incentivized more raids,
bigger demands, a truly vicious cycle.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Okay, before we leave the ancient and medieval world, we
have to talk about Julius Caesar and the Pirates seventy
five pc. This story is just amazing.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
It's brilliant, isn't It shows his personality even as a
young man. So Caesar gets captured by a solution pirates
near an island called Pharmacuse.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
They demand a ransom, standard pirate procedure. How much did
they ask for?

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Twenty talents of silver, which was apparently sort of the
going rate for a captured Roman nobleman or senator.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Okay, seems reasonable for a future dictator, but Caesar.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Caesar reportedly just laughed in their faces, Yeah, said it
was an insultingly low amount for someone like him.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
He demanded they ask for more money.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yes, he insisted they raise the ransom to fifty talents
about one point five tons of silver, claimed he was
worth far more. And then he spent the next thirty
eight days basically treating them like his staff. What He'd
make them listen to his speeches and poems, critique their
lack of appreciation for his genius, join their games, order
them around, and apparently he kept joking, or maybe not choking,

(13:46):
that he'd come back and crucify every single one of
them once he was.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
Free, and pirates just thought he was eccentric.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
He seemed to find him amusing. This arrogant Roman probably
thought his threats were just bluster.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Big mistake. What happened after the ransom was paid?

Speaker 2 (14:00):
So he has paid the fifty talents, he was released,
and what does Caesar do. He immediately raises a naval force,
sales back, finds the pirates, who were probably stunned, captures
the lot of them, takes back his fifty talents. Did
he He crucified them, just like he said he would,
although Plutarch notes he showed a bit of mercy by
having their throats cut first so they wouldn't suffer too

(14:20):
long on the crosses.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Wow, okay, message received, don't mess with Caesar. What a
story about psychology, power and follow through.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Absolutely, it's chilling, little glimpse into the future leader.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
All right, let's jump forward quite a bit to the
modern era, but still in the realm of physical ransom.
The nineteen seventies saw this explosion, almost a golden age
of kidnappings, especially in places like Argentina and Italy. What
was driving that?

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, the seventies were a real hotspot. In Argentina. It
was largely driven by political motives. Leftist corilla groups like
the ERP and the Montanaros were very active for their goals.
They were fighting against the government obviously, but also against
what they saw exploitative capitalism. They needed funding for their operations,
and Argentina was also dealing with rampant inflation that was

(15:07):
hitting the working class hard, so they targeted symbols of capitalism,
often foreign business executives.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Kidnapping for dollars, but with a political ideology behind it exactly.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
The ransoms were often huge. John R. Thompson from Firestone
in seventy three three million dollars in Rieque Mets from
Mercedes bens in seventy five five million dollars.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
And in the Mets case, they demanded more than just money.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Right, that's right. The Montenaros forced Mercedes Benz to rehire
over one hundred workers they'd fired, so a clear social
demand alongside the cash.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
There was one guy, Charles Lockwood. He had exceptionally bad.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Luck, unbelievably bad luck. A steel company director, kidnapped in
seventy three for two point five million dollars, then just
over two years later kidnapped again in seventy five, this
time for ten million dollars. He understandably left Argentina after that.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
I don't blame him twice. But the biggest ransom from
that whole Argentinian wave was the Boorn Brothers.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Or hey in one born. Yeah, big figures in the
green trading business. The Montennaris held him for nine months
in nineteen seventy four.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Nine months. That's an incredibly long time.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
A horrific ordeal, and the ransom was sixty million dollars
at the time, the largest physical ransom ever paid.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Sixty million dollars in nineteen seventy four money. What's that today?

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Adjusted for inflation, that's over two hundred and ninety million
and twenty fifteen dollars. Just astronomical and tragically. The driver
was killed during the abduction. The family later moved their
business to Brazil. It just shows the scale and brutality
of these operations.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
Absolutely devastating. Now shifting over to Italy round the same time,
nineteen seventy three, the John Paul Getty the third kidnapping.
This one is infamous for different reasons, mostly the family's reaction.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
Oh, the Getty case is unique and chilling. John Paulgetti,
the third grandson of the oil Tittoon. John Paul Getty,
who was then one of the richest men in the world,
kidnapped in Rome by the in drug Getta, the Calabrian mafia.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
And the grandfather. He wasn't exactly rushing to pay, was he?

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Notoriously no, The initial demand was seventeen million dollars. John
Paul Getty famously refused, saying something like, I have fourteen
other grandchildren. If I pay one penny now, I'll have
fourteen kidnapped grandchildren.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Cold, unbelievably cold. What changed his mind?

Speaker 2 (17:14):
The kidnappers cut off his grandson's ear and mailed it,
along with a lock of his air to a newspaper.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Oh my god, an ear.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah, gruesome, proof of life and proof they were serious.
That finally forced the grandfather's hand. But even then, even.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Then it wasn't straightforward.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
No, he negotiated the final ransom down to about three
million dollars when he only personally paid two point two
million dollars.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
Why two point two million dollars, specifically.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Because that was the maximum amount that was tax deductible
for him under US law at the time.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
You're kidding. He paid the tax deductible portion. What about
the rest?

Speaker 2 (17:45):
He lent the remaining eight hundred thousand dollars or so
to his son, the victim's father, at four percent interest.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
He charged his own son interest on the ransom money
for his kidnapped grandson.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yep, it's just a staggering example of cold, hard calculation
and deeply damaged family dynamics amid unimaginable wealth. The case
is also often discussed in terms of Stockholm syndrome. The
psychological connection the victim felt with his captors.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
Over time just incredible and back in the US nineteen
seventy four, Patty Hurst media aires. Her story took a
completely different turn.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
Totally different. Kidnapped by the Simbionese Liberation Army the SLA,
a small radical left wing group.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
Their demands weren't just money either, were.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
They No, they were primarily political. Initially, they demanded seventy
million dollars worth of food be distributed to every poor
person in California, an impossible demand. Really, estimates put the
real cost closer to four hundred million dollars today.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
So what happened did the family try?

Speaker 2 (18:42):
The Hurst family organized a two million dollar food distribution
in the Bay Area, which was chaotic and criticized. The
SLA then demanded another six million dollars, but it never happened,
And then came the twist.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
The twist being Patty Hurst joining them exactly.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
She released tapes denouncing her family, adopted the name Tania,
and was later seen partiating in an SLA bank robbery
holding a rifle.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
She became one of them.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Apparently, so she was arrested in nineteen seventy five. Her
trial was a media circus focused on whether she acted
under dress, if she was brainwashed. It became this huge
cultural moment debating coercion, identity, radical politics, very different from
a straightforward ransom case.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Wild times. If you're finding this journey through ransom history
compelling on beyond infographics, maybe take a second to leave
us that five star rating. It really helps. Okay, Let's
move to the nineties. Hong Kong Chunk Zi Kong aka.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Big Spender AH Big Spender, a legendary figure in Hong
Kong's underworld, a mobster known for his incredibly flamboyant lifestyle
funded by audacious crimes, especially kidnapping the city's wealthiest tycoons.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
He wasn't subtle about it, not at all.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
He craved notoriety as much.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
As money, and he targeted some really big.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Names, the biggest. In nineteen ninety seven, he kidnapped Walter Quack,
head of Sun Hung Kai Properties, a massive real estate empire,
held him for a week, apparently blindfolded in a wooden
container until reported seventy seven million dollar ransom was.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Paid seventy seven million Huge, but his most famous victim
was Victor lay Yes.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Victor Lee, son of Lee Kasheng, who was and still
is one of the richest men in Asia, if not
the world. Chung kidnapped Victor Lee in nineteen ninety six.
What was the price for him a staggering one hundred
and thirty three million US dollars paid in cash. Reportedly,
Chung himself went to the Lee family mansion to collect it.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
He went to the house.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
The audacity incredible, right, And the story gets even crazier.
After receiving the billion Hong Kong dollars, Chung supposedly called
Lee Koshing the father thank him to ask for investment
advice on how to manage the ransom money he just
extorted from him.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Beyond audacious, that's almost surreal. What happened to Big spender?

Speaker 2 (20:50):
His luck ran out. He fled to mainland China, where
the authorities had far less tolerance or his kind of
gangsterism than perhaps Hong Kong did at the time. He
was arrested, tried, convicted, and executed in ten ninety eight.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
A very swift end, a dramatic rise and fall. Okay,
from urban tycoons to the open ocean. Modern piracy still
a thing, surprisingly, very.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Much still a thing, and it's complex. It's not usually
about you know, treasure chests anymore. It's driven by poverty,
lack of opportunity, political instability, weak governance, particularly in regions
like the Horn of Africa Samalia.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Especially so desperate people turning to crime on the high seas.
What are they targeting?

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Mainly large commercial vessels, oil tankers, container ships, bulk carriers. Yeah,
they're after the valuable cargo, but more often they're kidnapping
the crew for.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Ransom holding sailor's hostage. Are the ransoms comparable to these
tycoon kidnappings?

Speaker 2 (21:43):
They can be very significant, especially when a valuable ship
and cargo are involved. Take the Irene sl in twenty eleven,
a huge Greek oil tanker of VLCC carrying two hundred
million dollars worth of crude.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Oil two hundred million in oil.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yep Somali pirates captured it. It was eventually released for
a ransom reported thirteen point five million dollars. That incident
really scooped the global shipping industry and highlighted the vulnerability of.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Oil routes any other major ones.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
The Samho Dream, a South Korean supertanker in twenty ten
carrying one hundred and sixty million dollars in oil, released
for around nine point five million dollars. That ransom was
famously delivered by helicopter dropped onto the deck.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Dropped from a helicopter like in a movie.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Pretty much, but the aftermath was in glamorous. The ship's
underwent bankrupt later, partly due to the costs and disruption.
It shows the ripple effects.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
And it's not just history, right, this is still happening absolutely.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Just earlier this year twenty twenty four, the Envy Abdullah,
a Magladeshi ship carrying coal, was seized with twenty three
crew released after a reported five million dollar ransom was
air dropped.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Five million dropped from the air. Wow? Are there other
hotspots beside Somalia?

Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yes, the Gulf of Guinea off West Africa is notoriously
dangerous for ship hijackings and crew abductions, and the Singapore
Strait has seen a huge spike in instance most opportunistic theft.
But it's called the global epicenter of piracy risks.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Recently, and the pirates are getting smarter.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
They adapt using captured fishing vessels or sometimes even larger
merchant ships as motherships to launch the attacks much further
out at sea, beyond the reach of coastal patrols.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Okay, so we've seen kings, tycoons, sailors. Let's circle back
to the idea of the king's ransom. What about modern
heads of state, presidents, prime ministers. Is kidnapping them for
ransom even a thing anymore? Or would it be pointless?

Speaker 2 (23:32):
It's a really interesting question. Generally speaking, in stable developed countries,
kidnapping the head of state for a financial ransom is
probably pointless.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Why because the state wouldn't pay.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Partly that but also because modern states aren't usually as
dependent on the single person of the leader as say,
a medieval monarchy was. There isn't that same sense of
the king being the state or having some kind of
divine right. Institutions are designed to continue functioning, So capturing.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
The leader and paralyze the country in the same way
not in the same way.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
No, an attack on a leader would be a massive
political crisis, a security nightmare, trigger huge response, but the
primary goal wouldn't likely be a simple cash ransom for
their release. It would be about political destabilization, making a statement,
maybe trying to force policy changes through terror.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
So that kind of ransom tactic is really only relevant
now in maybe very unstable.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Regions, exactly in places with weak governments ongoing conflict where
power is highly personalized. Maybe there kidnapping a leader could
still be seen as a way to extract concessions or money,
but in most of the world it shifted away from
ransom towards terrorism or political assassination.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
Aims a crucial shift which brings us squarely into the
digital age. Part three ransomware where the hostage isn't a
person but our data.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
This is what a concept of ransom has just exploded
and transformed in the last couple of decades. We've gone
from physical capture to digital hostage, taking.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Holding bits and bytes ransom. How does it actually work?

Speaker 2 (25:01):
At its core? Ransomware is malicious software malware that does
one of two main things. Either it encrypts your files
scrambles them so you can't access them, or it locks
you out of your entire computer.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Network and then demands payment to undo the damage.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Precisely, pay up, usually in cryptocurrency like bitcoin, because it's
harder to trace, and maybe they'll give you the decryption
key or unlock your system.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Where did this whole nasty idea start. It feels relatively new,
but maybe it's older.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
The very first documented case was actually way back in
nineteen eighty nine. The Aid's Trojan.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
The Aid's Trojan. What did it do?

Speaker 2 (25:34):
It was pretty basic by today's standards. It hit file
directories and encrypted the file names on victims computers after
they'd installed it from a floppy disk, ironically disguised as
information about AIDS. Then it demanded one hundred and eighty
nine dollars be mailed to a peobox in Panama to.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
Get a repair tool mailed to a peobox quaint Did.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
It work technically? Yes, but it had flaws. Security researchers
quickly found ways to reverse the file name encryption without paying.
But it planted the seed. The idea of digital extortion
was born.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
So when did it get serious with proper encryption?

Speaker 2 (26:10):
The theoretical groundwork was laid in nineteen ninety six by
two researchers at Columbia University, Adam Young and Modi Young.
They coined the term cryptovirology.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
Cryptovirology sounds ominous.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
It was. They propose using public key cryptography, the same
kind used for secure communication, for malicious purposes. The attacker
encrypts the victim's data with the public key, but only
the attacker has the corresponding private key needed to decrypt.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
It, making it mathematically impossible to get your data back
without the attacker's key.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Pretty much yeah, unless you have incredible computing power or
find a flaw in their specific implementation. They were actually
inspired by the face hugger in the movie Alien. This
idea of an attack that latches on and takes control cryptographically.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Okay, that's a terrifying inspiration. When did this theory become practice?

Speaker 2 (26:57):
We started seeing more sophisticated attempts in the early two thousand,
things like GPE, code archiveists, kryzip. They began using stronger
RSA encryption, increasing the key size is like gp coo
dot ak using a ten to twenty four bit key,
which was considered unbreakable at the time.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
So the attackers were getting better the encryption stronger.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Steadily, yes. But the real turning point, the one that
unleashed the floodgates, was crypto Locker in twenty thirteen.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Crypto Locker, I remember that name. That was huge, wasn't.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
It absolutely massive? It spread widely, was highly effective and
used bitcoin for payments, making it much easier for the
criminals to collect money anonymously. Estamate suggested netted them something
like twenty seven million dollars in just its first.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Few months, twenty seven million from locking files YEP.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Its success basically created the blueprint. Suddenly everyone saw how
profitable ransomware could be, and we got a tidal wave
of copycats and variations. The modern ransomware era had begun.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
And then came Wantacry in twenty seventeen that felt like
it hit everyone.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Wantacry was a global pandemic of malware, truly unprecedented in scale.
It infected hundreds of thousands of computers estimates are over
two hundred and thirty thousand across more than one hundred
and fifty countries in a matter of days.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
How did it spread so fast?

Speaker 2 (28:11):
It exploited a vulnerability called eternal Blue, which was believed
to have been developed by and then leaked or stolen
from the US National Security Agency NSA. This exploit allowed
it to spread automatically between vulnerable Windows computers on the
same network without anyone even clicking a bad.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
Link, so just jumped from machine to machine exactly.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
It hit major organizations. The UK's National Health Service NHS
was severely disrupted. Spanish telecom giant Telefonica FedEx the list
goes on all demanding a relatively small ransom three hundred
dollars in bitcoin, But the damage was immense.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
And wasn't there another big one right after that? Petya
or not Petya.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yeah. Later in twenty seventeen, Petya and a modified, more
destructive version called not Petya hit primarily in Ukraine but
spread globally too. This one was different, though, how so
It didn't just encrypt files. It targeted the master boot record,
the very core part of the hard drive needed to
start to computer. And many animus believe not Peckya wasn't
really about ransom at all. The payment mechanism was flawed,

(29:09):
suggesting the real goal might have been pure disruption, cyber
warfare almost disguised as.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Ransomware designed to destroy, not extort. Scary stuff. Okay, let's
talk about the money today. What are some of the
record breaking cyber ransoms we're seeing now? The numbers must
be insane.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
They are truly mind blowing. Ransomware is consistently called the
fastest growing type of cybercrime. Predictions suggests the global damage
costs not just ransoms, but downtime, recovery, reputation laws could
exceed two hundred and sixty five billion dollars a year
by twenty thirty.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
One quarter of a trillion dollars annually.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
That's the projection. Actual ransom payments hit a record of
about one point twenty five billion dollars in twenty twenty three. Interestingly,
they dropped quite sharply in twenty twenty four, down to
around eight hundred and thirteen million dollars.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
With a drop good news.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Possibly some experts think it's due to more companies refusing
to pay better defenses and maybe law enforcement actions disrupting
the big players. But the demands and the pentil costs
are still huge.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
So what's the single most expensive attack we know of
in terms of total cost?

Speaker 2 (30:08):
That dubious honor currently goes to the attack on Change
Healthcare in February twenty twenty four. They're a massive US
healthcare payment.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Processor healthcare again critical infrastructure exactly.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
The attackers the alphv Blackcat group confirmed they received a
twenty two million dollar ransom payment, But the total cost
of Change Healthcare in the US healthcare system due to
the disruption estimated at a staggering two point eight seven billion.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Dollars billion, with a b how they.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Apparently stole six terabytes of sensitive data, but the main
cost was the disruption, a crippled payment processing for potentially
forty percent of all US medical claims. Patients couldn't get
prescriptions filled easily, doctors couldn't get paid, billing was paralyzed,
a nationwide mess, just crippling.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
Were there any demands even bigger than that twenty two
million dollars even if not paid or not causing as
much total damage.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Oh, the demand can be astronomical. Amyplc, a UK waste
disposal company, reportedly faced a two billion dollar demand from
the mount Locker Group in December twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Two billion dollars for a waste company.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Apparently they stole one hundred and forty three gigabytes of data,
including sensitive government contracts and employee info. It's unclear if
Amy paid anything close to that, likely not, but the
demand shows the sheer.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Ambition any other massive demands.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Media marked the huge European electronics retailer hit by the
Hive Group in November twenty twenty one. Initial demand two
hundred and forty million dollars quarter of a billion, yeah
reports suggests it was negotiated down significantly, but the attacks
still encrypted over three thousand servers, shut down IT systems
and messed up store operations across the Netherlands and Germany.

(31:47):
High was known for bypassing multi factor authentication, making them
particularly dangerous.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Even national institutions aren't safe. Royal Mail in the UK.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
YEP January twenty twenty three hit by the Lockbit Group,
another major player. They demanded eighty million dollars, later dropped
it to forty million dollars. The attack crippled Royal Mail's
international shipping systems for six weeks. They publicly refused to pay.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
Okay, so huge demands, massive disruption. What's the largest ransom
payment that we know for sure was actually paid?

Speaker 2 (32:14):
That seems to be san Kora formerly a Marisurcebergen, a
US pharmaceutical giant, hit in February twenty twenty four. The
demand was reportedly one hundred and fifty million dollars and
they paid. Reports indicate they paid seventy five million dollars
in bitcoin in three installments. That makes it the largest
confirmed ransomware payment discovered so far. They lost patient data,

(32:35):
internal communications, a huge breach for a fortune five hundred company.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Seventy five million dollars just paid out. It's hard to fathom.
What about attacks that maybe had smaller ransoms but huge
impacts on critical infrastructure.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Colonial pipeline is the classic example. There May twenty twenty one,
major US fuel pipeline operator.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Right that caused gas shortages on the East Coade.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Big time panic buying stations running out of fuel. The
pipeline supplies about forty five percent of the East Coast fuel.
They shut it down voluntarily after the attack.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
How much was the ransom.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
Relatively small compared to some others, about seventy five bitcoin
worth nearly five million dollars at the time. The dark
side group responsible actually issued a weird statement saying they
were apolitical and just wanted money, apologizing for the societal chaos.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
H huh, sorry, we shut down your fuel supply. Just
business very much.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
There was also Kasaia in July twenty twenty one. They're
an IT company that provides software to other IT service.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
Providers, so hitting them hits their customers too. A supply
chain attack exactly.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
The Reval group exploited Kasia software to push ransomware out
to potentially fifteen hundred businesses worldwide that used CASIAS tools.
Supermarkets in Sweden had to close. Schools in New Zealand
were affected a massive ripple effect. The demand from Reeval
was seventy million dollars for a universal.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Decryptor WOW and CNA Financial, an insurance.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
Company, Yeah March twenty twenty one, they paid forty million
dollars after an attack encrypted fifteen thousand systems and stole
employee and customer data, including social security numbers. Paying forty
million dollars is ironic for an insurance company who often
advise clients not to pay.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
The irony is thick there. Okay, so how do these
cyber criminals actually operate? Now? It sounds like they've gotten
incredibly sophisticated.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
They really have. The initial entry point is often still
quite simple, a malicious email attachment, a link in a
phishing email that looks convincing, or maybe exploiting an unpatched
vulnerability and software facing the Internet.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
But it's evolved beyond just random emails.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Right Massively, We've gone from small groups maybe blasting out
emails helping someone clicks, to highly organized professional gangs. They
operate like businesses. They steal logging credentials. Probe networks for weaknesses,
constantly update their malware to avoid antivirus detection. It's an
arms race, it really is. And one of the biggest
developments is ransomware is a service.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Race, like software as a service, but for crime exactly.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Groups develop the ransomware tools and infrastructure, then they lease
it out or sell subscriptions to other criminals called affiliates.
The affiliates carry out the attacks and the developers take
it cut of the profits, so it lowers.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
The bar for entry. You don't need to be a
master code or to launch a major attack precisely.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
Groups like revial, lock, bit, Hive, conte many operated on
this rays model, enabling a huge number of attacks globally.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
And they're not just encrypting files anymore. There's this leakwere
or do swear attack.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
That's a nasty evolution. It's called double extortion. First they
encrypt your files, then they also steal sensitive data before encrypting.
Their threat becomes pay us to get the decryption key
and pay us so we don't leak your confidential data
publicly online.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
So even if you have perfect backups, they can still
pressure you.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
Exactly. Your backups might save you from the encryption, but
the thread of having your customer data, financial records, intellectual
property dumped online is a huge motivator to pay. Some
groups even do triple extortion, adding a thread of DEDOS
attacks distributed denial of service to knock your website offline
if you don't pay.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
They just keep adding layers of pressure. And who are
they targeting now? Has that changed?

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Big shift? Pre twenty seventeen it was mostly individuals. Now
it's overwhelmingly businesses in large organizations. One stat suggested eighty
one percent of infections in twenty eighteen were enterprises.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Why the shift Bigger payouts?

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Bigger payouts definitely, but also targeting sectors that are most
vulnerable to downtime healthcare, finance, manufacturing, government, education, anywhere disruption
causes immediate, significant pain.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
And it's not just computers anymore. Phones, other devices.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Yeah. Mobile ransomware is a thing, especially on Android. Often
uses scare tactics like fake police notices saying you've done
something illegal, demanding payment via things like iTunes gift cards.
And we're starting to see threats against Internet of things
IoT devices too, smart home devices potentially, Yeah, anything connected.
The tax surface just keeps.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Expanding, and tragically it's not just data or money anymore,
been real human costs.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yes, that German hospital case in twenty twenty where a
patient died after having to be rerouted due to a
ransomware attack was a stark wake up call, and the
COVID nineteen pandemic definitely made things worse. Attackers exploited the
chaos and the rush to remote work, which often opened
up new security holes.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
This all leads to that incredibly difficult question for any victim,
to pay or not to pay? It must be an
agonizing decision.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
Absolutely agonizing. You're balancing the immediate survival of your business,
maybe employee jobs, against the long term consequences and ethical considerations.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
What's the official advice law enforcement cybersecurity experts.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
Almost universally, the advice is do not pay.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Why so emphatic.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
Several key reasons we'll get into, but that's the strong
recommendation from bodies like the FBI, CS Europol.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
Okay, But despite that advice, companies do pay, sometimes huge amounts,
as we've seen. What are the arguments for paying? When
does it feel like the only option.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
The most common reason is simply desperation, You have no
viable alternative. If your critical data is logged, you don't
have good backups, or worse, your backups were also hit
by the ransomware.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Which they often target now.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Right, Yeah, exactly. They specifically look for and try to
delete or encrypt backups. If that happens, Paying might seem
like the only way to potentially recover years of work,
critical operational data, customer records.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
So it's about business survival, cure and simple.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
Often yes, Minimizing downtime is another huge factor. Every hour,
every day your systems are down, costs money, potentially huge
amounts lost revenue, lost productivity, damage to your reputation, customer trust, eroding.
Paying quickly might seem like the fastest way to get
back online and stop the.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
Bleeding, even if it feels wrong.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Even if it feels wrong, there's immense external pressure too,
especially for public companies, shareholders, customers, business partners. They all
want the problem fixed now. Investors might push for payment
just to stem the immediate financial losses. Thinking about the
quarterly report.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
And isn't cyber insurance a factor? Now? Doesn't that sometimes
cover ransom payments?

Speaker 2 (39:07):
It does, and that's a major influence many cyber insurance
policies do cover random payments, often as part of the
incident response. If you know insurance will cover the bulk
of the ransom, it makes the decision to pay much
easier financially. Statistics show insured companies are significantly more.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Likely to pay okay, So powerful arguments for paying, rooted
in immediate survival, financial pressure and insurance coverage now flip side.
Why are the authorities so strongly against paying?

Speaker 2 (39:33):
The number one reason is simple. Paying fuels the fire.
It proves to the criminals that their business model works.
It funds their operations, allows them to develop better tools,
hire more people, and launch more attacks against more victims.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
You're basically funding your future attackers.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
Precisely, and the data backs this up. Studies shows something
like eighty percent of organizations that paid to ransom get
hit again, often by the same group, and of those
nearly half pay a second time, often a higher amount.
You become a known paying.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
Target, a repeat customer for cyber criminals. Grim what else?

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Paying offers absolutely no guarantee you'll get your data back none.
The criminals might just take the money and vanish their
decryption tool, might not work properly, or might corrupt data
or they might just give you back some of your.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Data, so you could pay millions and still be crippled.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Absolutely that sofo's report from twenty twenty three found ninety
two percent of companies that paid didn't get all their
data back. Nearly a third only recovered about half. It's
a huge gamble.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
What about demand escalation?

Speaker 2 (40:35):
That happens too. If you show willingness to pay, they
might string you along increase the demands during negotiation. It
becomes a drawn out, costly.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
Nightmare and insurance. You said it encourages payment, but can
paying also hurt your insurance?

Speaker 2 (40:49):
It can. While policies might cover it, the insurer might
see the payment as a sign of poor security practices
or negligence on your part. This could lead to much
higher premiums in the future, or they might even refuse
to renew your policy.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
And finally, the legal side, can you actually get in
trouble for paying?

Speaker 2 (41:07):
Potentially yes, depending on who you pay. If the ransomware
group is linked to a sanctioned entity, a terrorist group,
a nation state under sanctions, paying them could violate laws
like anti money laundering regulations or sanctions regimes like OPHAK
in the US, you could face hefty fines or even
criminal charges. It could also be seen as obstructing a
law enforcement investigation.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Wow, okay, so a minefield of practical, ethical, and legal
reasons not to pay. How are governments trying to tackle
this beyond just advising against payment.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
There's definitely a push on the law enforcement side. International
cooperation has led to some major takedowns, disrupting the infrastructure
of groups like Lockbid, Black Cattle, phv C, REFV, seizing
their servers, sometimes recovering decryption keys. It's a constant battle,
but there have been successes.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
And some countries are looking at new laws right like
Australia's mandatory report.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
That's a really interesting development. Starting May thirty, twenty twenty five,
businesses in Australia with over aud three million dollars in
turnover must report any ransomware or cyber extortion payment they
make within seventy two hours.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Seventy two hours, that's fast. What do they have to report?

Speaker 2 (42:16):
A lot of detail? Business info, the impact of the incident,
the specific malware used, how the attackers got in, how
much was demanded, how much was paid, money or other benefits,
and even details of communications with the extortionists.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
What's the goal of collecking all that data.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
The government wants a clearer picture of the threat landscape,
who's being targeted, how what tactics are working. They can
use this intelligence to give better advice to businesses, especially
smaller ones, and potentially shape future laws or counter strategies.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
Is the reported information protected. Companies might be hesitant to
share embarrassing details.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yes, there are legal protections. Generally, the information provided in
these mandatory reports can't be used against the company in
most legal proceedings unless they provide false information or obstruct
an investigation. They're trying to encourage honest.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
Reporting and penalties if you don't report.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Yes, a civil penalty applies for failing to report within
the seventy two hours. They're starting with an education first
approach for the first six months or so, then moving
to stricter enforcement in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
Are other countries doing similar things.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
The UK is actively considering it. They're talking about possibly
banning public sector bodies, schools, hospitals, counsels from paying ransoms altogether,
and potentially bringing in mandatory reporting for private companies too.
Maybe in early twenty twenty five. There's also talk in
some places like Maryland in the US and Japan about
making the actual creation of ransomware illegal going after the developers.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
And arrests are happening.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Sometimes it's hard because these groups are often based in
jurisdictions that don't cooperate. But there have been successes like
a British student jailed for Revedent ransomware years ago, and
the FBI has indictments out for the creators of the
SamSam ransomware, even if they haven't been caught yet.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Okay. It all paints a picture of a massive, complex threat,
which brings us to defence Part five, Fortifying your digital defenses.
What can individuals and organizations actually do?

Speaker 2 (44:13):
The absolute key takeaway from everything we've discussed is that
prevention and preparedness are paramount. Yeah, you have to assume
you could be a target no matter your size, and
you need defenses that go beyond just basic antivirus. You
need layers the last line of defense.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
Let's get practical. What are the absolute essential mitigation strategies?

Speaker 2 (44:31):
Number one backups, backups, backups, backups. It sounds basic, but
it's the most critical defense against the encryption part of ransomware.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
But not just any backups right the attackers.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Target them exactly. You need robust backups. That means, following
the three two one rule, at least three copies of
your data on two different types of media, with one
copy stored completely offline or off.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Site, offline meeting, physically disconnected.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yes, external hard drives unplugged from the network, tape stored securely,
or cloud backups that are immutable, meaning they can't be
altered or deleted for a set period, even by an
administrator account that might get compromised. Using a pen to
only permissions on network storage can also help prevent ransomware
from overwriting.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Good backups Okay, secure isolated backups critical. What's next?

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Keep everything updated, prompt security patches. So many major ransomware
attacks like wanta Try exploited known vulnerabilities for which patches
were already available. Install updates for your operating system, your browser,
your applications, everything as soon as possible.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Don't click remind me tomorrow on updates.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Please don't. And then there's basic cyber hygiene and user education.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
This is huge, training people not to click on bad links.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
Essentially, yes, be incredibly suspicious of unsolicited email attachments or links,
even if they look like they're from someone you know.
Use strong unique passwords, enable multi factor authentication wherever possible.
Train employees regularly make security awareness part of the.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Culture, and if someone does suspect an infection.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
Disconnect, immediately pull the network cable, turn off Wi fi
isolate that machine from the rest of the network as
quickly as possible to stop the ransomware potentially spreading laterally.
Network segmentation is also.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Key here, breaking the network into smaller zones exactly.

Speaker 2 (46:14):
So if one part gets infected, the ransomware can't easily
jump to critical servers or backup systems in another zone.
Contain the blast radius. Following guidance from agencies like CISA
in the US is always a good idea too, They
have detailed best practices.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
These are great foundational steps. Are there more advanced technical defenses?

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yes. For very high security needs, worm storage write once
read many is an option, think like old school CDRs
or dvdrs, but more modern versions. Once data is written,
it cannot be changed or deleted, making it immune to ransomware.
Encryption practicality is limited for constantly changing data, but for

(46:52):
archives it's very secure. What about file system features filesystem
snapshots are powerful. Windows has Volume shadow Copy VIAS, which
takes point in time copies, but ransomware knows about VSS
and tries to delete these shadow copies using a tool
called vssadmin dot ex.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
So what can you do?

Speaker 2 (47:09):
You can restrict user access to vsadmin dot ex to
make it harder for malware to delete those snapshots. Also,
Windows Defender has a future called controlled folder Access, where
you can designate specific folders like your documents or backup
locations that only explicitly authorized applications are allowed to modify.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
That sounds useful, and you mentioned ZFS earlier.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
ZFS is a really robust file system often used in
servers and NAS devices. If the ransomware doesn't gain root
administrator privileges, ZFS is highly resistant. It allows for frequent
immutable snapshots, read only copies of the filesystem state. If
you get hit, you can often just roll back to
a clean snapshot from minutes or hours before the infection,

(47:51):
losing very little data and without needing traditional backups.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
So ZFS snapshots are like a built in time machine
for your data.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
A very resilient one. Yes, it's a strong defense layer.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
Okay, lots of defensive strategies. But let's say the worst
happens your hit, what are the real chances of decrypting
your files without paying?

Speaker 2 (48:08):
Honestly, the chances are generally slim. For modern ransomware variants.
The encryption they use is usually very strong, like AES
or RSA with long keys. Breaking it through brute force
is typically impossible with current technology.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
So those free decryption tools you sometimes hear about.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
They exist, often thanks to law enforcement seizing servers or
researchers finding flaws in specific ransomware versions. The No More
Ransom Project, a collaboration between Europol, Kospersky, McAfee and others,
is the best place to check. They have a tool
called crypto Sheriff where you can upload an encrypted file
and it tries to identify the ransomware and see if

(48:45):
a known decryptor exists.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
So worth a try, but don't count on it exactly.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
It works for some older or slot strains, but most
modern professionally coded ransomware can't be decrypted that way. Sometimes
forensic techniques might recover old deleted versions of files from
the hard drive, but that's not guaranteed either.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
And we have to mention the really shady side of this,
those recovery firms that might just be paying the ransom
behind your back.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Yes, that's a deeply concerning finding. Investigations like one by
pro Publica uncovered evidence that some firms advertising ransom free
data recovery were essentially acting as intermediaries. They'd negotiate and
pay the ransom to the criminals themselves, get the decryption key,
and then charge the victim a hefty premium for the
recovery service without disclosing they'd paid the attackers.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
So the victim thinks they avoided paying a ransom, but
they actually paid it plus.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
A markup exactly. And sometimes the actors themselves would even
recommend these specific recovery firms to victims who are having
trouble making the bitcoin payment. It creates this whole murky
ecosystem around ransomware payments. Extreme caution and due diligence are
needed if you engage any third party recovery service.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
What a complex, evolving, and frankly scary world we've explored today.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
It really is. We've got from actual kings held for
silver and gold on medieval battlefields.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
To modern tycoons held in secret locations for millions, all
the way.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
To invisible adversaries holding critical data hostage for billions in cryptocurrency.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
On beyond infographics. Today we've seen the definition of ransom
itself more dramatically. But those core human drivers.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
Greed, fear, power, desperation, they seem pretty constant, don't they.
The desire to get back what's been taken, whether it's
a person or precious data.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
It really underscores that. Whether you're talking about protecting a
monarch centuries ago, or securing a multinational corporations network today,
or even just safeguarding your own personal photos and files.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Understanding these threats, knowing the history and critically building smart
layered defenses isn't just optional anymore. It feels essential.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
It makes you wonder. In our age, where information is
everywhere and everything is connected, maybe the ultimate king's ransom
isn't measured in gold or bitcoin anymore. We mean, maybe
it's the intangible stuff, our privacy, our security, our collective
peace of mind. Knowing our digital lives and critical systems
are safe. That feels priceless.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
It's a powerful thought. What price are we willing to pay?
Not in ransom, but an effort and investment to protect that.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
And what steps are you listening right now willing to
take proactively to make sure that prices never demand of
you in the first place.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Something to think about, definitely, And if this deep dive
on beyond infographics gave you some valuable insights or sparks
your curiosity, please do consider leaving us that five star
rating and.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
Share us with a friend. Your support really does help
us keep bringing these explorations to more curious minds. Thanks
for joining us.