The last thing you want is hackers getting away with your organization’s bank account numbers, so if you have to buy bitcoins for a ransom, set up a new bank account to hold the payment funds and close the account as soon as possible afterwards.
While PayPal transfers money, BitCoin IS money—virtual money that exists as a series of transaction records kept by individuals or organizations in a Bitcoin “wallet” (an application) and recognized by other Bitcoin wallets. The value of a bitcoin also fluctuates versus other currencies. So if your organization is hit by ransomware and you have to pay in bitcoins, you have to go to a Bitcoin exchange such as Coinbase, pay dollars for bitcoins at the going rate, and then deliver those bitcoins to the extortionists. Which all sounds straightforward, until you dig into the details.
What could go wrong?
Unlike most other forms of payment, Bitcoin is completely unregulated. There is no central issuer of bitcoins, and there’s no Federal Reserve of bitcoins that keeps track of all the transactions or controls their value. Bitcoin transactions are untraceable. That’s why it’s the preferred currency of the Bitcoin ATMs where you can buy the coins in cash, if there isn’t one near you, or if your organization isn’t prepared to come up with thousands of dollars in cash on short notice, you will need to buy bitcoins from an online exchange. The exchange will require you to supply a bank account or debit card number to fund the transaction, which creates an immediate risk because Bitcoin exchanges are notorious for being hacked. (One of the earliest, Mt. Gox, went bankrupt after it was hacked in 2014, losing an estimated $450 million worth of its customers’ bitcoins.) The last thing you want is hackers getting away with your organization’s bank account numbers, so if you have to buy bitcoins for a ransom, set up a new bank account to hold the payment funds and close the account as soon as possible afterwards.
The second risk is that bitcoins fluctuate in value, whereas ransomware demands are usually specified in fixed dollar amounts. You can Bitcoin Litecoin Keychains IMG_3478 via photopin