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"ransoms" Synonyms
kidnaps abductions kidnapings kidnappings appropriations highjackings hijackings captures payments payoffs prices moneys bribes compensations sums pay-offs costs charges fees rates figures amounts expenses tariffs damages quotations outlays assessments tolls valuations levies totals values blackmail extortions intimidations exactions briberies threats coercions compulsions milkings protections wringings bleedings shakedowns corruptions extractions protection rackets tributes deliverances rescues liberations releases salvations deliveries emancipations redemptions discharges manumissions acquittals escapes extrications freedoms reliefs savings liberties enfranchisements untyings unbindings taxes duties contributions offerings imposts customs dues subsidies excises gifts homages sacrifices victims immolations martyrs oblations scapegoats presentations burnt offerings sacrificial lambs peace offerings buys freedom of pays up for strikes a deal for buys the freedom of pays for release of buys out exchanges payment for pays off buys back obtains the release of exchanges for a ransom obtains release of secures the release of delivers liberates frees emancipates extricates manumits redeems saves unchains unfetters restores to freedom sets free unshackles disenthrals bails out sets loose unbinds abducts shanghais pirates runs off with takes as hostage takes as prisoner takes hostage takes prisoner holds to ransom spirits away seizes hijacks snatches nobbles removes grabs skyjacks waylays blackmails threatens milks bleeds compels exacts forces squeezes coerces dragoons intimidates wrests wrings extorts press-gangs badgers demands extracts shakes buys corrupts suborns fixes squares has lubricates lands buys off gets at keeps someone sweet gives an inducement to gives someone a backhander gives someone a sweetener greases palm More

294 Sentences With "ransoms"

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Related: Beheaded Hostage Triggers Debate Over Whether Governments Should Pay Ransoms Trudeau has publicly said Canada will not pay ransoms in exchange for hostages, directly or indirectly.
Those for whom ransoms are not paid are often decapitated.
Law enforcement officials have long advised victims against paying ransoms.
The FBI has traditionally given blanket warnings not to pay ransoms.
The Swiss-run agency has a policy of never paying ransoms.
Sweden's foreign minister insisted that the country does not pay ransoms.
MODERN African pirates prefer machetes, machineguns and ransoms to cutlasses and parrots.
United States policy — unlike many European countries — is not to pay ransoms.
So far, WannaCry ransoms have grossed a little more $80,000, Chainalysis reported.
Hostages are taken from Mali and neighbours, and traded for huge ransoms.
As with all ransoms, the hostage taker asks for more each time.
Few of the ransoms were met, and instead the hostages were beheaded.
"No ransoms were paid," the presidency tweeted after the Dapchi girls were returned.
If negotiators are not careful, they risk sending ransoms spiralling, as in Argentina.
Two Indonesians, however, escaped captivity amid speculation that their families had paid ransoms.
Even large cities, however, have had to pay smaller ransoms than Riviera Beach.
He steals luggage, ransoms stolen cars to their owners and contemplates bigger scores.
"The South African government does not subscribe to payment of ransoms," she said.
One researcher traced 771 ransoms that netted Slavik's crew a total of $1.1 million.
As far as ransoms go, demanding a single bitcoin is a relatively modest proposal.
Paying out generous ransoms hits everyone in the insurance industry, and those they cover.
Reportedly, local police departments have paid ransoms between $300-500 to unlock their systems.
So far hackers have made over $143,000 worth of bitcoin from the ransoms paid.
Al Qaeda has relied on ransoms as a major source of income for years.
Schmidt claimed "various intermediaries" have since attempted to demand "absurd" ransoms for the painting's return.
What we do know is that hackers are suddenly demanding ransoms at an unprecedented rate.
Even police departments have paid ransoms ranging from $300 to $2023 to unlock their systems.
The release of foreigners by the Islamic State is rare; most cases have involved ransoms.
They're dangerous, criminal acts -- high-tech burglary, theft, armed robbery, piracy and kidnapping with ransoms.
Britain and Canada, like the US, refuse to pay ransoms to kidnappers holding their citizens.
Numbering around 400, Abu Sayyaf is known for abducting foreign and local tourists for ransoms.
We estimate that ransoms accounted for no more than 4% of ISIS' total income in 2014.
At the IOM's transit centre, men relay horrifying stories of being robbed or imprisoned for ransoms.
"By appeasing Iran and paying ransoms, the Obama Administration has put Americans in danger," said Sen.
He suggested that awareness campaigns against paying these kind of cyber ransoms are having an impact.
The government of former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper held a policy of not paying ransoms.
The attackers' email address also appears to have been taken offline, preventing ransoms from being paid.
Reportedly, local police departments have paid ransoms ranging from $300 to $500 to unlock their systems.
Canadians and a German were among the Westerners beheaded by Abu Sayyaf when ransoms were not paid.
Since then, the government has faced questions about its protocols around paying ransoms for Canadians taken hostage.
But he said in no uncertain terms that the government itself would not pay ransoms to terrorists.
The bitcoin link is also relevant with WannaCry, which demanded ransoms to be paid using the cryptocurrency.
In March the football team of the University of Buea was taken hostage; many parents paid ransoms.
According to local news reports, both groups paid ransoms, but the Philippine government has not confirmed this.
" Mr. Kerry said something similar: "The United States does not pay ransom and does not negotiate ransoms.
He also blamed Western governments for failing to negotiate, noting that some hostages were released for ransoms.
There has been persistent speculation, however, that ransoms have been paid for most of the freed hostages.
There, they were imprisoned and made to call their families and beg for ransoms of around $3,000.
The economic argument for dissuading future ransoms doesn't compel companies faced with losing access to critical information.
Panicking firms would agree to huge ransoms, more concerned with freeing their executives than driving down the fee.
"The United States does not pay ransoms," Kerry told a news conference in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires.
The ransoms ranged from 30,203 pesos ($2,100) to two million pesos ($140,270) in 2921, depending on the victim.
It's crippled Britain's NHS, and its makers have so far hauled in more than $50,000 in paid ransoms.
Scammers are running a "virtual kidnapping" scheme where they demand ransoms from parents without actually taking their kids.
He communicates with victims, extracts ransoms via Bitcoin, and shares 40 percent of each payment with the affiliate.
He warned that if hospitals paid the ransoms, it could lead to a slippery slope of other attacks.
In the latest attack, the criminals demanded ransoms ranging from $300 to $600, to be paid in Bitcoin.
Hackers typically walk away when ransoms are not paid, said Mark Weatherford, a former senior DHS cyber official.
Otherwise, these attacks will just keep spreading with organizations paying ransoms that are cheaper than upgrades, until they're not.
Historically, the United States has refused to pay ransoms because it did not want to encourage future hostage situations.
Arranz said the $600,000 paid by Riviera Beach was a lot, but that six-figure ransoms are not uncommon.
Administration officials insist it was not, and Mr. Obama said on Thursday that the United States never pays ransoms.
EDT on Sunday, but that amount could rise as more victims rush to pay ransoms of $300 or more.
Some people will ask: Why should the government be responsible for paying ransoms for journalists who were kidnapped abroad?
From 2011 to 2013, the group pulled in roughly $20 million per year in robberies, ransoms and fuel taxes.
Exclusion and cooperation clauses in many cyberinsurance policies expressly prohibit businesses from paying such digital ransoms without pre-approval.
Earlier this week, hackers cashed out on over $143,000 worth of bitcoin they got from ransoms paid from WannaCry.
In October 2014, David Cohen stated that ISIS had raised at least $20 million from ransoms so far that year.
However, other hospitals, law firms, small businesses and everyday citizens have already paid anywhere from $200 to $10,000 in ransoms.
An anonymous blackmailer has caught at least two YouTube creators in a scheme involving cash ransoms and esoteric copyright laws.
ISGS is predominantly self-funded through kidnapping ransoms, localized robberies and the smuggling of items such as cigarettes and drugs.
There is a reason it has been longstanding U.S. policy that we don't negotiate with terrorists, we don't pay ransoms.
Today Spain's largest telecom company in was hit with pop-ups demanding ransoms before employees could gain access to files.
The current Canadian government "does not negotiate with, or pay ransoms to, terrorist organizations," government spokeswoman Rachna Mishra told CNN.
The details of the demand have not been confirmed, and officials say they do not pay ransoms for kidnapped staff.
Traffickers have locked up some migrants, forcing them to call home to have relatives pay ransoms to secure their release.
Ransoms in at least some of the cases were negotiated directly by Al Qaeda's central leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Mr. Lawson, of the F.B.I.'s cyber division, said the bureau's official position was that victims should not pay ransoms.
From 2008 to 2012, there were hundreds of attacks, and the pirates, and their financiers, made a fortune in ransoms.
A majority of the Europeans, including French and Spanish citizens, were released for multimillion-euro ransoms paid by their governments.
The former hostage believes Canada's stance on not paying ransoms was nothing but "chest beating" by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Last year, five police and sheriff's departments in Maine were locked out of their records management systems by hackers demanding ransoms.
It traffics in looted antiquities and ransoms for kidnapped foreigners, and drums up donations from wealthy supporters in the Persian Gulf.
With Petya, it's unclear if any systems were successfully decrypted before the email was blocked, although roughly 20 ransoms were paid.
Kidnappings over the last 15 years have made the Abu Sayyaf militants notorious, with extorted ransoms running into millions of dollars.
Eventually Democrats, along with a rump of establishment-minded Republicans, got done what needed to get done, without paying any ransoms.
They have hit foreign targets and kidnapped scores of Westerners, often holding them for years until they get multimillion-dollar ransoms.
Their actions cost the world economy $7 billion and earned the pirates some $160 million in ransoms, according to the bureau.
It used a variant of WannaCry, a piece of malicious software that locks victims out of their systems and demands ransoms.
Most victims are Afghans and many kidnappers are criminal gangs seeking ransoms but foreigners have also been abducted for political ends.
Her mother's sister has been kidnapped twice — most recently this past November — and returned only after her family paid steep ransoms.
Ransoms for the return of kidnapping victims or stolen vehicles can reportedly be paid in cash at the prison's front gates.
Pirates were once the scourge of the region, chasing oil tankers and other ships and demanding ransoms for those they captured.
While piracy has decreased worldwide, the Gulf of Guinea has become an increasing target for pirates who steal cargo and demand ransoms.
They disappeared political opponents and Tamils from all over the country, often demanding ransoms from expatriate family members as a fundraising mechanism.
In Washington, a State Department official said the United States maintains a "no concessions" policy that covers ransoms for Americans taken captive.
WannaCry demanded ransoms starting at $300, in line with many cyber extortion campaigns, which keep pricing low so more victims will pay.
In August, it was revealed that hackers got away with $143,000 in bitcoin relating to ransoms paid from the May WannaCry attack.
The country paid ransoms and freed high-level Boko Haram figures in exchange for the release of some of the Chibok girls.
The group derives its financing from various sources — including taxation, looting, ransoms and oil and gas sales, according to the FDD's analysis.
Diachenko said that the bitcoin account connected to this ransom appears to have successfully taken a handful of ransoms in the past.
Its payment methods, in which people wanting to profit from ransoms might be expected to take a keen interest, are rudimentary and slapdash.
But many of the seamen taken hostage by Somali pirates have at least been set free fast, once fat ransoms have been paid.
Throughout President Richard Nixon's first term, hijackers seized commercial flights every week or two, often demanding passage to Cuba or six-figure ransoms.
Abu Sayyaf militants have become notorious for kidnapping over the past 15 years or so and have earned millions of dollars in ransoms.
Over 225 mayors across the US have backed a resolution to not pay ransoms to hackers, as reported by The New York Times.
It also became a textbook case of how poor negotiating can send future ransoms rocketing and attract new entrants to the kidnapping trade.
In many countries the media refrain from publishing information about the size of ransoms for fear of attracting more criminals to the business.
Her colleagues on the force said that they had not asked for ransoms; instead, they collected retribution fines, which were paid to victims.
It has been involved in multimillion-dollar ransoms to free Al Qaeda captives before, including a Swiss woman held in Yemen in 2013.
By mid-2014, ISIS had released most of the hostages after their governments, and sometimes their employers or families, paid multimillion-dollar ransoms.
A minority of its hostages have died while in custody, unlike those of the Islamic State, which both ransoms and regularly kills captives.
By Monday, only 223 victims of more than 200,000 had paid ransoms, generating $109,270 to the attackers' Bitcoin wallets, according to Dell SecureWorks.
Just five years ago, attackers in Eastern Europe were locking up victims' computers and demanding ransoms of $217 to $503 to unlock them.
Ransoms are becoming disproportionate to the size of targets, said Kelly Castriotta, Allianz SE North American head of product development for financial lines.
Just five years ago, attackers in Eastern Europe were locking up victims' computers and demanding ransoms of $100 to $400 to unlock them.
It imprisoned and tortured foreigners, demanding ransoms for their release and killing those whose countries would not pay in grotesque films posted online.
This is involved in a minority of the $0.5bn-1.5bn thought to be paid out in ransoms each year, but the share is growing.
But despite narrowly avoiding the possibility of not seeing each other again, Lindhout and her mother agree with Trudeau that governments shouldn't pay ransoms.
The hacker or hackers, who call themselves The Dark Overlord, recently tried to extort a series of health care organisations into paying hefty ransoms.
Adam White, head of Coinbase's digital currency exchange, recently said the surge in Bitcoin is unlikely due to firms buying to pay cyber-ransoms.
Initially it seemed the attack was caused by cybercriminals looking to extract ransoms from victims, but NATO's analysis appears to put this theory aside.
By mid-2014, most of the hostages held with Ms. Akavi had been released, after ransoms were paid by their governments, families or employers.
But a small number of American and British citizens, whose countries, like New Zealand, have a strict policy of refusing to pay ransoms, remained.
Investors have been held hostage until they paid Bitcoin or Ether ransoms worth millions of dollars, as criminals increasingly target at the crypto-rich.
Mass graves of Rohingya were discovered near the Malaysian border in 85033, and reports indicate that traffickers demanded $2,000 ransoms from the victims' families.
Hackers have cashed out on more than $143,000 worth of bitcoin relating to ransoms paid from the massive WannaCry cyber-attack earlier this year.
According to F-Secure's Sean Sullivan, that's in keeping with previous Petya attacks, which have historically targeted large companies likely to quickly pay out ransoms.
The move makes any party that interacts with the accounts potentially liable for sanctions as well, and going forward, it effectively bans paying SamSam ransoms.
The group executed Canadians Robert Hall and John Ridsdel after the Abu Sayyaf spokesperson said their ransoms of about $6.2 million each were not paid.
Abu Sayyaf, which means "bearer of the sword", is notorious for piracy and kidnapping and for beheading foreign hostages for whom ransoms are not paid.
The Gulf of Guinea has become an increasing target for pirates who steal cargo and demand ransoms, even as piracy incidents fall worldwide, experts say.
Echoes, ransoms, "visiting days," a lake whose far shore is imagined as a refuge and then as a prison: these images circulate throughout the book.
The jihadists were pushed out a few months later by Kurdish forces and local fighters, and released most of the captives after receiving exorbitant ransoms.
They deploy the ransomware against victims that can pay large, often six-figure ransoms, particularly in the commodities, manufacturing and health care industries, Sophos said.
As hackers hold hostage the networks that power police forces and utilities, municipalities must operate with hobbled computer systems, and decide whether to pay ransoms.
Law enforcement and cybersecurity experts broadly recommend against paying ransoms because it does not guarantee hackers will return the data and could incentivize new attacks.
As hackers hold hostage the networks that power police forces and utilities, municipalities must operate with hobbled computer systems, and decide whether to pay ransoms.
Related: Trudeau Convinces G7 to Oppose Ransoms, as the Multi-Billion Dollar Kidnapping Industry Booms But calls would never come in directly from the group.
The Canadian government has taken a strong stand against paying ransoms, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arguing he didn't want Canadian travellers to become targets.
Publicly reported attacks in which hospitals and police have paid ransoms, then recovered data, has encouraged attackers to further target those groups, cyber security experts said.
In those cases, the U.S. government refused to pay ransoms for its citizens' release, in keeping with longstanding government policy barring paying concessions to foreign terrorists.
Several of those kidnapped, such as the German and Dutch citizens taken last year, have been released, but it is not known whether ransoms were paid.
Until relatively recently, it was best known around the world for kidnapping Westerners in remote parts of the Sahel and using the ransoms to support itself.
Abductions of foreigners — with ransoms paid by Western countries — are AQIM's most lucrative source of funding, the center noted, with illegal drug trade becoming increasingly important.
By 2012, AQIM vaulted to the top of al-Qaeda's table of richest branches solely by "vast sums it obtained through ransoms," Fanusie and Entz noted.
Dozens of the Chibok girls are now free, in large part because of ransoms paid by the government, but more than 100 are still being held.
France and Italy, both members of the G7, are known for paying ransoms in order to secure the release of citizens who have been kidnapped abroad.
The governments of some of America's other closest allies, however, do routinely negotiate with terror groups and pay ransoms to win the release of captive citizens.
It found that one of the key justifications for that approach -- that paying ransoms would encourage groups to nab more Americans -- doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
The most notorious of these attackers, a group called SamSam after its type of ransomware, is known for demanding the highest ransoms, 25 to 30 Bitcoin.
The men, who admitted to searching Github for Amazon Web Services credentials they then used for their break-ins, had asked for ransoms in each case.
There, Victory said, they were subjected to hard labor, beatings and forced to make frantic calls to family begging for ransoms that might secure their freedom.
Paying ransoms is "supporting the business model," encouraging more criminals to become extortionists, said Will Bales, a supervisory special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Security experts estimate that ransoms total hundreds of millions of dollars a year from such cyber criminals, who typically target users of Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system.
Nobody who excused or cheered the GOP's unprecedented decision to demand policy ransoms for increasing the debt limit is first and foremost motivated by preserving political norms.
Insurers often insisted they have them, reckoning that this would reduce the risks of them having to pay out millions in ransoms if a ship were hijacked.
Wallstrom told CNN it was Sweden's "policy of principle" not to pay ransoms in kidnapping cases but wouldn't discuss the details of how the release was obtained.
In some places, tourists and locals can't move freely without fear of being snatched off the street by Muslim terrorist thugs who raise money by demanding ransoms.
And while the administration has continued its policy of not paying ransoms, it has now pledged not to criminally charge families if they decide to pay one.
As a means to curtail AQIM's wealth and diminish the group's impact, the FDD study suggested that Western entities should refuse to pay ransoms, among other steps.
During a Senate committee inquiry in 2010, the Australian Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade outlined its reasoning: "The Australian government does not pay ransoms," it said.
Both had the appearance of hacker blackmail assaults known as ransomware attacks: screens of infected computers warn users their data will be destroyed unless ransoms are paid.
Ransomware attacks have become a worryingly common threat against public systems including schools and local governments as hackers hold critical data and services hostage for massive ransoms.
The Islamist group Abu Sayyaf, based in the southern Philippines, has carried out kidnappings in the region, beheading some hostages and extorting millions of dollars in ransoms.
Germany's Die Welt newspaper recently reported that Lukas Hospital in Neuss and other German hospitals have debated whether or not to pay ransoms or lose their data.
Contrary to the philosophy of not negotiating with terrorists for fear of incentivizing future incidents, the FBI has actually recommended that victims pay ransoms in certain scenarios.
What makes the ransoms so maddeningly tempting for cops to pay is that most attacks that have disabled police department computers have sought just a few hundred dollars.
"First of all, the United States of America does not pay ransom and does not negotiate ransoms with any country," Kerry said at a news conference in Argentina.
When bitcoin entered public awareness it was chiefly as a facilitator of anonymous, illegal sales on the "dark web" and as the currency of choice for online ransoms.
The malicious code encrypted data on machines and demanded victims $300 ransoms for recovery, similar to the extortion tactic used in the global WannaCry ransomware attack in May.
Last year, partly in response to criticism from Foley's family, the Obama administration eased rules preventing family members of hostages from paying ransoms to groups such as ISIS.
Most small- to medium-size businesses pay the ransoms because they do not have backups of their data and feel they have no other option, Mr. Rebholz said.
He added that he believed ISWAP was making two types of propaganda, one aimed at obtaining ransoms from the Nigerian government, and one to satisfy Islamic State demands.
Baltimore and Lincoln County each refused to pay ransoms but expect to spend big money to recover from the mayhem — $18.2 million and as much as $400,000, respectively.
The United States Conference of Mayors this summer passed a resolution discouraging local governments from paying ransoms, saying it encourages more attacks when the hackers continue to profit.
The software locked users' computer systems and demanded ransoms in Bitcoin, generating an embarrassingly small amount of actual cryptocurrency ransom but leaving a digital paper trail a mile wide.
The parents of an American hostage killed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2014 are speaking out against the U.S. policy of refusing to pay ransoms.
Earnest defended the government's longstanding policy not to pay ransoms for American hostages, though he said the administration has never prosecuted anyone for trying to free a family member.
The company said no ransom had been paid, but the local news media speculated that ransoms had been paid for all Indonesian and Malaysian sailors who had been released.
The US government, by contrast, has an equally longstanding policy of refusing to negotiate with terror groups or to pay ransoms to buy the release of American civilian captives.
In the end, no ransoms were ever paid to ISIS, and the senior US official told me that the families had never held any serious negotiations with the group.
While government computers were crashing, banks, cellphone operators and railroads in Russia were fending off attacks designed to freeze their systems in demand for ransoms to unlock the data.
Criminal hackers often negotiate ransoms not to damage corporate networks; Fisher's bounty could change negotiations, guaranteeing that if a corporation doesn't pay, hackers still can monetize hacking certain targets.
Despite its small size, it has rebuffed countless military offensives and remains a serious threat, often using abductions to raise funds and killing hostages when ransoms are not paid.
These factors help explain the mystery of why such a tiny number of victims appear to have paid ransoms into the three bitcoin accounts to which WannaCry directs victims.
Hostages from European countries, such as Austria, France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland, that are known to pay ransoms, are far more likely to be released by their captors than Americans.
Worms and botnets, malware that ransoms files for bitcoin, even an elaborate $100 million insider trading scheme uncovered last year—all have been linked to hackers from former Soviet states.
The US government, by contrast, has an equally long-standing policy of refusing to negotiate with terror groups or to pay ransoms to buy the release of American civilian captives.
Until recently, the families of missing US citizens were sometimes even told that they could be prosecuted under federal law -- and potentially jailed -- if they paid ransoms on their own.
"This is so easy to mitigate," the federal official said While the FBI now explicitly advises against paying ransoms, individual agents have been known to nudge victims in that direction.
Hackers asked victims to notify them by email when ransoms had been paid but German email provider Posteo quickly shut down the address, a German government cyber security official said.
Until recently, the families of missing US citizens were sometimes even told that they could be prosecuted under federal law — and potentially jailed — if they paid ransoms on their own.
It was the first of its kind, said cybersecurity researchers, in that its goal appeared to be spreading as quickly as possible, rather than to successfully collect ransoms from victims.
Religious and philanthropic associations were active all over Europe, raising money for ransoms, and publishers hawked both moving memoirs of female captivity and, later, pornographic fictions on the same theme.
Miri explained that many hospitals are starting to pay ransoms to hackers, despite advice not to, because it's expensive for IT systems to be down for days or even weeks.
Bitcoin is the best known of these currencies, especially after hackers this month instructed victims to pay ransoms in the anonymous digital cash in order to get their computer files decrypted.
Some ransomware schemes are so sophisticated that they even invest in customer service, helping victims who want to pay their ransoms navigate the complexities of obtaining bitcoins and making bitcoin payments.
This total includes costs paid by shipping operators for increased insurance, labor, armed guards and other protection measures, as well as ransoms paid by insurers and the costs of naval deployments.
In the article, Cantlie criticizes governments that oppose paying ransoms to ISIS to secure hostages' release and offers the final words of journalist James Foley, who was beheaded two years ago.
The White House has insisted the payments were not ransoms and were in the form of cash since financial sanctions against Iran have made it impossible to transfer the money otherwise.
Recently, a hacking group called The Dark Overlord breached a slew of companies, stole their data, and then took the data to journalists in order to pressure victims into paying ransoms.
What to do: Many experts do not recommend cities pay ransoms in ransomware hacks since cities could still dish out potentially thousands of dollars and still be stuck in the hack.
As the report noted, both the government and cybersecurity experts advise against paying ransoms for stolen data for many reasons, foremost because including that paying up doesn't necessarily resolve the issue.
The US government itself would still not pay ransoms, but Obama said that this administration would no longer threaten to prosecute families who paid money to hostage takers on their own.
Over the weekend a "kill switch" was discovered by accident, which doesn't stop the malware from spreading, but at least prevents it from activating the code that encrypts and ransoms your data.
Trudeau also said the two talked about their shared position of not paying ransoms, and said it was something they would be talking about with other leaders as they grapple with terrorism.
She was later moved to Raqqa, where she was held with nearly two dozen Western hostages, most of whom were released for ransoms paid by European governments or their employers or relatives.
The militias torture, extort and otherwise abuse migrants for ransoms in detention centers under the nose of the U.N., often in compounds that receive millions in European money, the AP investigation showed.
The deaths of the two Canadians triggered strong words from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who doubled-down on Canada's policy against paying ransoms to terrorists — a policy the US also holds publicly.
Alongside the DoJ action, the U.S. Department of Treasury has assigned sanctions to two further Iranians who it says helped process the ransoms, which were paid in Bitcoin: Ali Khorashadizadeh and Mohammad Ghorbaniyan.
Premiums are so low in part because Nigerian pirates, unlike those in Somalia, have priced their ransoms just right: for many companies they can be written off as a cost of doing business.
Hostages from European countries such as Austria, France or Germany that are known to pay ransoms are more likely to be freed, according to a 2017 report from the think tank New America.
He is also thought to have raised tens of millions of dollars through ransoms for Westerners kidnapped in Mali and Niger, some of which has been spent in the weapons bazaars of Libya.
Dissidents and unwelcome minorities could be sold to West Germany or Israel in exchange for substantial ransoms: in the 1970s, Nicolae Ceausescu said that Romania's best export commodities were "Jews, Germans and oil".
Aid agencies and most governments do not pay ransoms, he said, but payments are sometimes made by third parties such as businessmen with connections to the country where a hostage is being held.
As it is, Americans are twice as likely to die in captivity by their captors while countries who pay ransoms — Germany, Spain, France, Austria, and Switzerland — are more likely to have hostages released.
Others preferred to chase high-value targets like rich individuals or critical services—think hospitals or government agencies—that might be willing to pay much higher ransoms to regain access to their systems.
A New York Times tally of ransoms collected by Al Qaeda's affiliates conducted in 2014 found that the group had taken in at least $125 million, with $66 million paid just in 2013.
The SamSam group is known to move from file to file, manually encrypting hundreds of systems, so it can demand the highest in Bitcoin ransoms, according to the Crypsis Group, Symantec and others.
Armed groups, including a powerful affiliate of Al Qaeda and the Houthi rebels who control Sana, have abducted foreigners to extract ransoms from their governments or because they accuse them of being spies.
Although ransoms typically are less than the hospital paid, $200 to $10,000, victims of a ransomware known as CryptoWall reported losses over $18 million from April 2014 to June 2015, the FBI said.
The no-concessions policy is defended on the basis that paying ransoms would create incentives for US citizens to be kidnapped, and that ransom payments fill the coffers of terrorist groups and criminal gangs.
While piracy has decreased worldwide, especially off Somalia's coast, a hotbed for hijackings a decade ago, West Africa's Gulf of Guinea has become an increasing target for pirates who steal cargo and demand ransoms.
ISIS makes $1 million to $2 million a day in oil production, has obtained over $100 million in ransoms from kidnapping and collects "taxes" from the 6 million people it has gained control over.
Though Republicans control the House of Representatives and the Senate, many of them will refuse to increase the debt limit without accompanying policy ransoms, meaning Democrats will be expected to provide the decisive votes.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is active in desert areas north of the city and has a history of seizing foreigners and demanding ransoms.
"I am concerned that by hospitals paying these ransoms, we are creating a perverse incentive for hackers to continue these dangerous attacks," Boxer said in a letter sent Friday to FBI Director James Comey.
To offset those losses ISIS has halved its fighters' salaries, increased taxes and fees for people remaining under its control and resorted more to such tactics as kidnapping for ransoms and smuggling stolen archeological artifacts.
The other volunteer said when there is a will there is a way: Ransoms have been paid to free Western hostages, and negotiations secured the evacuations of others, including Islamic State militants at one point.
The ransomware swept around the globe as the day progressed, hitting 73 other countries, including England's National Health Service, which left doctors and patients scrambling for information and care services unless they paid the ransoms.
Before last month, the lowest point of Barack Obama's presidency was in mid-2011, when Republicans used the threat of defaulting on the national debt to extract policy ransoms from him and Democrats in Congress.
Attacks in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean escalated in 2008 and by 2011 more than 700 hostages and 30 vessels were being held by Somali gangs who demanded millions of dollars in ransoms.
The direct link to North Korea's missile program creates further ethical hurdles for companies, insurers and municipalities that must decide whether or not to pay ransoms to criminal groups that have locked up their files.
The men, Faramarz Shahi Savandi and Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri, chose targets with complex yet vulnerable systems — organizations that could afford to pay ransoms and needed to urgently restore their systems back online, prosecutors said.
Ransomware victims have paid more than $25 million in ransoms over the last two years, according to a study presented today by researchers at Google, Chainalysis, UC San Diego, and the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
Secretary of State John Kerry insisted Thursday that the United States never pays ransoms for hostages, rejecting accusations that a $400 million payment to Iran was a quid pro quo for the release of American prisoners.
But while well-meaning, the public stand against ransoms does little to disguise the ongoing flow of money to terrorist groups in exchange for hostages, and the booming multi-billion dollar kidnap and ransom industry worldwide.
Ransomware is a form of malware that encrypts data on infected machines, then typically asks users to pay ransoms in hard-to-trace digital currencies to get an electronic key so they can retrieve their data.
The Colemans and other families of US hostages missing in Afghanistan or the Middle East, by contrast, have been given conflicting government guidance about whether they could try to pay ransoms to get their relatives back.
The version of the program used to demand ransoms from the operators of frozen computer systems exploits vulnerabilities in older and unlicensed versions of Microsoft Windows, used widely in Russia, that did not have security patches.
The hospital's actions also sparked an ethical debate over whether or not companies should pay ransoms in order to get services back online, provided the criminals in question have a high likelihood of being able to deliver.
French civilians have long been favored targets for kidnapping by criminal and Islamist groups in the arid West African region, partly owing to perceptions that the French government is prepared to pay ransoms to secure their release.
The group's finances have also taken a hit, with revenue (largely from taxation, oil and ransoms) declining from up to $1.9bn in 2014 to, at most, $870m in 2016, according to a report from Kings College London.
Earlier on Friday, Spain's government warned that a large number of companies had been attacked by cyber criminals who infected computers with malicious software known as "ransomware" that locks up computers and demands ransoms to restore access.
Alongside taxes, ransoms and trading in antiquities, oil has been a major fundraiser for Islamic State operations, with U.S. defense officials estimating that it made about $47 million per month from oil sales prior to October 2015.
"For the next ten years, ransoms yielded roughly $100 million, becoming the predominant source of funding that allowed the group to spread its influence" across the Sahel region of western and north-central Africa, the study added.
Kimberly Goody, a cybercrime analyst at FireEye, said Ryuk had been tied to financially motivated criminals and that its operators typically extorted more than $300,000 at a time, with some ransoms reaching into the millions of dollars.
In 2003, the relatively small Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat carried out a series of kidnappings of tourists and aid workers, receiving more than $6 million in ransoms that enabled the group to expand regionally into AQIM.
IOM said the traffickers had sent clips to the captives' families via the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp - a Facebook channel - along with threats that their loved ones would be killed unless ransoms of up to $10,000 were paid.
TORONTO (Reuters) - Hackers are demanding increasingly hefty ransoms to free computers paralyzed with viruses, as cyber criminals seek to maximize profits from large numbers of victims willing to pay up, according to cyber security firm Symantec Corp (SYMC.
He said that while the government did not pay ransoms, there was a particularly sensitive reason why the diplomat had to be saved, and the government was confidentially asking a syndicate of British business people to step in.
It was not immediately clear whether the men were seized by Abu Sayyaf, a group linked to Islamic State that is responsible for recent beheadings of Western hostages and notorious for the extortion of millions of dollars in ransoms.
Ransomware, one of the fastest-growing types of cyber threats, encrypts data on infected machines, then typically asks users to pay ransoms in hard-to-trace digital currencies to get an electronic key so they can retrieve their data.
While piracy has decreased worldwide in the past decade, the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa has become an increasing target for pirates who steal cargo and demand ransoms, according to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB).
Two groups that have been asked to pay ransoms according to Bloomberg include the Center for American Progress and Arabella Advisors, though it is not known if Arabella is part of the same campaign as the other groups targeted.
As cyberattacks take aim at larger targets and higher ransoms, and with the price of bitcoin spiking, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said there's "absolutely" reason to believe North Korea has an appreciating pile of bitcoin to fund future attacks.
LONDON, May 12 (Reuters) - British hospital workers were warned on Friday that they were at threat from malicious software known as 'ransomware' that locks up computers and demands ransoms to restore access, according to an email seen by Reuters.
Many of the transactions recorded on that distributed ledger are crimes: Billions of dollars in stolen funds, contraband deals, and paid ransoms sitting in plain sight, yet obscured by unidentifiable Bitcoin addresses and, in many cases, tangles of money laundering.
It's not known whether Ridsdel, who was living and working in the Philippines, had a K&R insurance policy, but insurance companies are increasingly selling these policies, which compensate families and companies in the event they pay ransoms for hostages.
For more than a decade and a half, Al Qaeda and groups associated with it have used Mali's vast and inhospitable north as a way station for holding Western hostages, who are typically released only after hefty ransoms are paid.
But according to ProPublica, insurance companies are "both fueling and benefiting from" ransomware attacks by opting to pay ransoms, in some cases "even when alternatives such as saved backup files may be available," as the outlet previously reported in May.
Ransoms now range from as little as one Bitcoin, which equates to roughly $1,700, to as many as 30 Bitcoin, nearly $51,000, with the median ransom equating to four Bitcoin, or nearly $873,000, according to researchers at the Crypsis Group.
Related: Beheaded Hostage Triggers Debate Over Whether Governments Should Pay Ransoms Hall, Sekkingstad, and Hall's girlfriend Maritess Flor were kidnapped in September from the marina of resort near alongside John Ridsdel, a Canadian who was executed about three weeks ago.
Read more: Kidnappers Around the World Want Their Ransoms Paid in Bitcoin On July 20, whoever was behind WannaCry 1.0 cashed out all the bitcoin they accumulated, and converted it to the more anonymous and harder to track cryptocurrency Monero, according to researchers.
While it has reaped sizable ransoms for the release of hostages, its kidnappings of a Swiss missionary and an Australian doctor and his wife, who were taken the same day as the Splendid Hotel attack, could indicate a need for more cash.
Where Republicans in the Obama years demanded absurd ransoms — like the complete defunding of the president's signature legislative achievement — Democrats are asking Trump to accept the kind of deal he said he wanted all along, a deal key congressional Republicans have already embraced.
The government said this week that it was forming a commission to verify that the FARC had included all profits it may have earned from extortion, ransoms and drug trafficking, and the group must play by the same rules as any other party.
Over the past year, the city governments of Atlanta and Baltimore have spent millions to recover their systems instead of paying the ransoms demanded, while almost two dozen small town governments in Texas were hit by a coordinated ransomware attack in August.
Hospitals are especially vulnerable to ransomware attacks because they have enormous, sophisticated but also often-antiquated computer systems — think MRI machines using Windows 95 — reams of vitally important medical information on people and, sometimes, plenty of money to pay ransoms, experts said.
"[T]wo people familiar with probes being conducted by the FBI and private security firms" told the magazine hackers threatened at least a dozen liberal groups, warning that they would release potentially inflammatory emails and other documents if not paid ransoms between $30,000 and $150,000.
An insightful examination by the New America Foundation titled "To Pay Ransom or Not to Pay Ransom?" found that while a strict no-concession policy does not appear to lower the number of kidnappings, not paying ransoms increases the likelihood that hostages are killed.
Related: Trudeau Convinces G7 to Oppose Ransoms, as the Multi-Billion Dollar Kidnapping Industry Booms "To the Philippine government, please stop shooting at us and trying to kill us, these guys are gonna do a good job of that," Hall says in the video.
Both the Canadian and Italian governments are believed to have paid ransoms in the past, including for the Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler, who was released in 2009 after the sum of 700,000 euros was paid to Al Qaeda's local chapter, according to the terror group's internal records.
"It's a perfect business model, as long as you overlook the fact that they are doing something awful," said James Trombly, president of Delphi Technology Solutions, a Lawrence, Massachusetts, computer services firm that helped three clients over the past year pay ransoms in bitcoin, the virtual currency.
Extortion is so widespread that captives even have a market value depending on which country they're from — Eritreans, who have a large, well-organized diaspora, command the highest prices, while West Africans fetch the smallest ransoms and are the most likely to be ill-treated, Libya experts say.
Related: As Clock Ticks on Hostages Held By Abu Sayyaf, Canada to Raise Ransom Issue at G7 Talks Friday's announcement by the G7 nations comes one month after the death of Canadian John Ridsdel in the Philippines, and has renewed a longstanding debate over the ethics of paying ransoms.
Kerry defends $400 million payment to Iran, says U.S. pays no ransoms U.S. woman killed in London was wife of Florida State professor "If you are not buying, move along," was the terse response from one man at the table, who appeared to be in his late teens.
Drug-related violence has long plagued these areas but this bottleneck of migrants is new — and because many asylum seekers have relatives in the United States, criminal cartels have begun kidnapping them and demanding ransoms, sometimes subjecting them to violence as bad or worse than what they fled.
"We unequivocally reiterate our resolve not to pay ransoms to terrorists, to protect the lives of our nationals and, in accordance with relevant international conventions, to reduce terrorist groups' access to the funding that allows them to survive and thrive, and call on all states to do so," the directive states.
Although the U.S. and the U.K. have thus far publicly refused to pay kidnap ransoms, France may have paid up to $18 million for four of its captured journalists in April 2014, and locals are said to be ransomed for anywhere between $500 and $200,000 each, reported the Congressional Research Service.
By contrast, continental European countries like Germany and France, while not acknowledging payments publicly, are known to have paid ransoms for their citizens, freeing them even from the clutches of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State (and helping fund those groups' bank accounts in the process).
Rather than try to convince unscrupulous vessel owners to fork up big ransoms, the negotiators, mostly working for nothing, first estimated the pirates' costs—often $100,000-$200,000 for renting a boat and getting weapons and kit; expenses for fuel and food; and payoffs to stop government officials, warlords and village elders from interfering.
There is no law on the books banning families from paying ransoms to foreign kidnappers who have captured their loved ones, and many companies operating in dangerous parts of the world — especially from the oil and energy sectors — have long had insurance to cover the costs of hiring firms specializing in hostage recovery.
"The way things are" also includes the armed robberies, sexual assaults, carjackings, murder, extortions, and kidnappings, the traditional kind with ransoms, and the express type, where the victim is driven to various A.T.M.s and forced to "max out" his bank account, which, depending on the current balance, may take a matter of hours or days.
A devastating cyberattack initially targeting Ukraine's infrastructure spread like wildfire across the globe on Tuesday, and in the space of just a couple of hours, locked down the computer systems and demanded ransoms from hundreds of organizations including shipping giant Maersk, the world's largest advertising holding company WPP, and even the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.
The finding has important implications for the policies of the incoming Trump administration, which will have to decide whether to continue the Obama administration policy of not paying ransoms or making other kinds of concessions to secure the freedom of hostages, including whether to allow American corporations to raise money to free hostages without fear of prosecution.
He opted into the country's posting system as a gesture of loyalty to the team that plucked him out of career purgatory, and while the ultimate $500,000 fee that the Rangers paid the Swallows for Barnette was a pittance compared to the ransoms Yu Darvish and Masahiro Tanaka demanded, the symbolism mattered more than the money.
As a colorful cast of characters—including Charles Manson, Jan and Dean, Joni Mitchell, Sam Cooke, Frank Sinatra Jr., the Mamas and the Papas, Elvis Presley, and Ike and Tina Turner—emerged, the Wilson brothers found themselves pulled into a terror-filled existence that spiraled from free love orgies and surf music to kidnappings and ransoms.
Ransomware, which has been used by hackers interested in holding digital data hostage to extract sums of money from large companies, is now being used on small businesses, who often don't have the money to investigate a cybersecurity attack but do have just enough to pay ransoms in the $3,000 to $5,000 range to regain control of their data and computer systems.
The federal government's de facto policy of looking the other way when families paid ransoms for the release of their missing loved ones began to markedly change after ISIS started kidnapping Americans in Syria in 2014, when the group burst onto the world stage by quickly conquering large swaths of Iraq and Syria and instituting a brutal form of Islamic law.
Reginal military spokesman Major Filemon Tan said that it was very likely that the body recovered was Hall's, and that the military was awaiting confirmation from police forensic experts, according to AP. Abu Sayyaf demanded $8.1 million for Hall's release, but Trudeau was also unequivocal that Canada would not pay ransoms for hostages, saying it would only serve to fund terrorism and encourage future hostage-taking worldwide.
If Obama officials were willing to accept that money Iran would acquire due to the Iran deal would be used to fund its far-reaching terrorism operations, if Obama officials were willing to lay off Iran's efforts to build a massive ballistic missile force, were willing to break U.S. policy about ransoms (predictably inciting Iran to nab more hostages), willing to free from prison dangerous men bent on harming the United States, the Politico report is entirely compatible with what we already know.
A 2014 investigation by the New York Times found that al-Qaeda and its affiliates in places like Africa had taken in at least $125 million in revenues from kidnapping since 2008, including $66 million in 2013 alone: These payments were made almost exclusively by European governments, which funneled the money through a network of proxies, sometimes masking it as development aid... In its early years, Al Qaeda received most of its money from deep-pocketed donors, but counterterrorism officials now believe the group finances the bulk of its recruitment, training and arms purchases from ransoms paid to free Europeans.

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