- UK is going to ban ransomware payments for critical infrastructure
- This is an expansion of the ban on government departments
The UK is going to ban ransomware payments for operators of critical national infrastructure, which is an expansion of the already existing ban for government departments. This should exclude financial incentives for attackers that can be more effective than exceptional technical security measures.
Details on the Expansion of the Ban for Ransomware Payments
The National Crime Agency (NCA) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) have launched a consultation to explore a ban on ransomware payments for operators of critical national infrastructure, namely:
- Chemicals
- Civil Nuclear
- Communications
- Defense
- Emergency Services
- Energy
- Finance
- Food
- Government
- Health
- Space
- Transport
- Water
This consultation will run from January 14 to April 8 so that all operators can understand all the measures in detail, as well as clarify the provisions. However, this is not the first ban on ransomware payments, and a ban on government departments has already been established.
The incentives for the growing cyber attacks can be categorized into three – ideological, political, and financial. Despite the highly safe solutions that exist and improve – it is technically impossible to create a completely secure system, a proactive and strategic measure can be to influence the incentives.
Political incentives in the form of state-sponsored hacker groups and ideological incentives in the form of hacktivists cannot be completely ruled out either – financially motivated hacker groups can be significantly influenced.
UK Security Minister Dan Jarvis said:
“These proposals help us meet the scale of the ransomware threat, hitting these criminal networks in their wallets and cutting off the key financial pipeline they rely upon to operate.”
In addition to complete bans, the Home Office is seeking consultation feedback on the following proposals. This includes options such as:
- Do Nothing.
- A complete ban on ransomware payments.
- A targeted ban on ransomware payments for regulated Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) and the public sector.
- A ransomware payments prevention regime for all ransomware payments.
- Mandatory reporting of a payment prior to the transaction (sector specific or economy wide).
- A mandatory ransomware incident reporting regime for all sectors.
- Mandatory reporting of ransomware incidents for specific sectors.
Conclusion
While the pace of attacks on critical infrastructure has slightly decreased in 2024, which is unfortunately not the case for the crypto industry, removing the financial incentive may indeed be a good strategic decision, as opposed to the inevitable constant arms race between attackers and defenders on the technical plane.
However, a concrete solution is yet to be made and its effectiveness is yet to be evaluated in the future.
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