NSA Using Psy-Ops To Fight Ransomware Gangs

Former NSA Director of Cybersecurity, Rob Joyce, admits that takedowns of ransomware gangs don’t result in arrests, because the gangsters are state-sanctioned. Nevertheless, it makes them distrustful of their colleagues. This is why strategies to use psy-ops to fight ransomware may be in order.

PC Mag reports that Joyce, and his successor, Dave Luber, spoke at the recent RSA Conference about how takedowns can prompt paranoia among hackers.

“You erode that trust amongst the criminals, and that adds friction,” said Joyce. “Am I really talking to who I think I’m talking to? Am I actually giving my Bitcoin to somebody who’s going to launder and wash it and give it back? Or is it just going to be seized?”

In the case of the notorious Lockbit gang, the Justice Department claims that its senior leader, a 31-year-old Russian named Dimitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, offered to cooperate with law enforcement in exchange for details about the identity of his competitors.

According to Joyce, things like that provide insights into an otherwise opaque ecosystem, and sometimes peel people off for advantage. “That’s an important capability that governments across the globe are really digging into,” he says.

Joyce’s successor, Luber, agreed. He says the NSA has supplied intelligence that the FBI and Justice Department can use against suspected hackers. The two also discussed the cyber threat from China targeting US critical infrastructure in an attempt to sow chaos in the US. 

According to Luber, the US is bolstering security at critical infrastructure providers as well as key companies by ensuring default and weak passwords are removed from IT systems, and software patches for vulnerable software and equipment are quickly installed.