Royal Mail dismisses ‘absurd’ $80M ransom demand

It&#x27;s fucking ridiculous to hit the postal service, providing a practically-free function to a lot of people who really need it, and operating at barely even (in US and Canada too, so I imagine other countries are similar).<p>The ransomers sound like kids, &quot;speculating that the directors personally held 100m of crypto&quot;? What a disgusting amateur job.

How is it even legal to pay ransoms? Surely this is transferring money to criminal enterprises. If it is not illegal it needs to be made illegal.

Why is ransomware still a problem? Is it that difficult to make off-site backups every hour? Storage is cheap. There are many air gapping options for backups, too.<p>It sounds like a case of normalized deviance, for which the management should be held accountable.<p>As much as I don’t like victim blaming, I think it’s beyond incompetent to still not backup your data in 2023 as a government org.

If Russia were to physically disrupt a country&#x27;s social services by force, it would be an act of war. Here they have disrupted a British social service without force by state sponsored hacker terrorists, rendering harm in the physical world. The line gets blurrier.

lol this is Royal Mail, not Google. It&#x27;s not like it has $80 million sitting around. Maybe they should have been more flexible. That&#x27;s usually how you negotiate: start with a lot and work to something smaller that the counterparty will agree on. Done-in by greed and got $0, which they deserve. Shows how even the rules of negotiation applies to dark markets.

I live in a small suburb north of Houston, and they were hit with a ransomware attack in late December. They still aren&#x27;t fully operational.

Why does a corporation not have offline backups to supposedly mission critical files?

Well, this sucks. I&#x27;m waiting for medicine to be delivered to continental Europe from Scotland through Royal Mail. Apparently their international packages are being delayed by a lot right now. Really hope this doesn&#x27;t affect the operations too much and they&#x27;ll be able to continue delivering in full capacity ASAP.

So now that all NFTs and such are out, ransomware is the only application of cryptocurrency that has persisted, right?<p>And cryptocurrency is the main enabler of the ransomware attacks as well.

I really hope that the Royal Mail releases an &#x27;El Risitas&#x27; style video recounting the hackers&#x27; thought process here.

Sounds a lot like the reaction to dr Evil<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=BRAkobf-tVI">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=BRAkobf-tVI</a>

I bought some candy from Amazon that was shipped by Royal Mail, and it never arrived. Amazon told me to take up the refund with Royal Mail, with no instructions how to do so. Anyone know how I can get a refund from Amazon&#x2F;Royal Mail for the candy they never sent?