Australia’s government recently said they plan to ban ransomware victims from paying the ransom demands from threat actors to destabilise cybercrime incidents in the country. A part of this plan is to criminalise ransomware extortion payments and penalise companies that pay money to threat actors.
The recent cyberattack incidents in Australia ignited the government’s idea of criminalising ransomware payments, such as the data breach attack on Medibank, the country’s largest health insurance provider. Medibank’s attack resulted in the insurance company losing 9.7 million customer data, which the threat actors could have completely stolen.
However, security experts believe that criminalising ransomware payments could be counterproductive since companies will be forced to conceal ransomware incidents to avoid penalties from the law.
Aside from the victimised companies’ dilemmas of hiding a ransomware attack incident to evade facing legal penalties, threat actors could also demand another extortion payment from the victims, blackmailing them into exposing the first transaction to authorities.
These plans came to light after the announcement of a new permanent joint standing operation between the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and their strategies to combat the country’s issues on cybercrime.
Furthermore, the proposed operation will involve active and “offensive” attacks on the cybercriminal groups responsible for ransomware campaigns. The Australian authorities added that they would hunt these malicious entities down and disrupt their operations before they could perform more attacks on potential victims.
Australian law enforcement operations also prioritise investigating, targeting, and disrupting all cybercrime syndicates, especially ransomware threat groups. The highest priority for ransomware groups is based on the damage they can cause and the threat they present to Australia’s national interests.
Earlier this November, the government cybersecurity leaders of about 40 countries partnered to reaffirm their plans of executing a collective effort to put an end to ransomware attacks. Directed by the Australian government, this initiative will establish a voluntary International Counter Ransomware Task Force that aims to boost the public’s knowledge about cybersecurity threats and track the illicit financial transactions of ransomware groups.
