Sounds like you are confusing civil damages -- which these are not -- and assets confiscated in connection with a criminal indictment, which is what these were. This is money or some other items of value that belong to the defendant (illegally, in the government's view).
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DoJ Arrests Hacker Involved With REvil Group That Stole Apple's MacBook Pro Schematics
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Some may, but there is always the trust factor. How do I know they aren't going to continue doing illegal things? Keep giving them more money? A better solution is to find people with skill and ability and train them; or for the few who decide not to risk a return to prison hire them but keep an eye on them as well.
Those who would try to extort millions are unlikely to settle for bounties; and some may lack the real skills but are buying COTS ransomware.
or at least a notch in the middle of his forehead...
Why not the death penalty? Especially if they caused deaths.
Shutting down a meat processor could have resulted in foodborne illness and disease, either or both of which can, have, and will kill.
Shutting down an electric grid can result in the failure of electric life-preserving equipment, from refrigerators to breathing machines.
So yeah. Why not the death penalty? It should at least be on the table, shouldn't it?
This is not very smart. Come on, you know this is not smart!
In the early days, this may have been done once or twice. But today, no business does this anymore; especially not any company in the business of life-critical security such as the electric grid providers, the oil and nuclear fuel industries, airlines, aerospace and defense companies, medical equipment makers or service providers, or the banking system.
You just can't do that! First off, 96% of all crimes are commited by somebody who has already committed other crimes!
A court would see this, so if you hire somebody with a dirty record and they then commit another crime at your company, YOU as the hiring manager could be up for a long jail sentence yourself. Or you could be open to civil lawsuits from your co-workers, shareholders, customers, etc. If your hiring decision was made in spite of knowing that something bad could have been prevented, then you could even be open to personal lawsuits.
And good luck trying to get a jury to believe your claims that you "didn't know this could happen!"
You'd be lucky if you only got fired for being an idiot and hiring somebody with such a record who then went on to commit new crimes while in your employ. Getting fired for such foolishness would be the LEAST you could expect to happen to you.
Furthermore, you also can't just give a security clearance to a convicted felon; the feds will reject that application all day long. And many companies require a valid security clearance as a condition of employment, particularly with sensitive government contracts.
And the rest is just as silly and just as dangerous. You need to rethink your position before you become a business owner or hiring manager.
We should NEVER take solace in a punishment that may actually never be assigned. Or fully served. First off, it's an empty emotion. Second, you'll just forget all of this, especially when it is most important that you keep fighting for the right thing to happen.
Lots of things have to happen before the criminals will go to actual PRISON. Like a trial, where actual proof needs to be presented, vetted, and validated. And a verdict. And then there's the sentencing phase. So many ways for the weak-on-crime judges and legal system to let this person get away.
I would only celebrate a decisive conviction followed by a REAL, LONG, and FULLY SERVED sentence. No early release. Not for "good behavior" and not for "covid" or some other fake "humane" reason for letting criminals out of prison.
I won't celebrate until I know that this has ACTUALLY HAPPENED. So the earliest I could celebrate would be...oh, maybe 2038, give or take. Sooner if the death penalty is given and executed before that date.
Well, without getting involved in politics, it depends on the laws that follow internationally in other countries. So that’s not really something that I’m
necessarily saying that incarceration should be the answer for somebody with such extensive crimes, but that’s not for us to decide either, being that every country has its own rules and regulations.
Yes, you're quite right on that. And in order to extradite a person from certain foreign countries to the US for trial and punishment, we have to abide by "no death penalty" treaty clauses that may be in force.
I get that. I'm just saying why not have it on the table in cases where we are not restricted by treaty, especially if the crimes involved the deaths of US citizens.
That's one sure way to shut down criminals. A certain percentage will avoid committing certain crimes in certain places if they know that the punishment is going to be something they really can't live with. Literally, in some cases!
I completely agree with what you’re saying. I do think it’ll be interesting to see how this all ends and I do believe the punishment should be severe as possible, but only by the accordance of those countries regulations.
Oooh the authoritarians are salty ^. They just looooove throwing people in cages
Most people are surprised to find out that there is no connection between the penalty and perpetrating the crime. In other words, the death penalty does not stop, or even slow down crime. It seems crazy when you think about it, but the whole idea of capital punishment falls apart when you look at that truth. So states that continue to execute prisoners just appear to want to kill people.
There was a Calvin and Hobbes strip with Calvin confronting his father with the question 'How does killing people that kill people show that killing people is wrong?'. It's possible it's a fake, based on the strip about soldiers killing people in other countries because I can't find it, however it does confront the absurdity of capital punishment. It's a stunning question: If it doesn't deter crime, why do it. Indeed... The rest of the world isn't 'easy on criminals' because they don't kill them, they realize it's barbaric and pointless to put them to death.
Hasn't it. Let's look at the facts. The asked for a ransom, then it mysteriously fizzled out and the documents were removed a couple of days later. So..... either the ransom was paid, or they were raided and killed. Which was it?
Why is it always the Russians that do this? Well I suppose since Putin supports this kind of activity, it will only get worse.
I got into the habit of watching our Cisco firewall and watching hackers trying to break in. I got to the point where I would start blocking their attempts, and I could tell there was a person on the other end. I would whois their IP, and get their subnet, and on some of the attack attempts, would block one IP address, and another one from their subnet would take up the probing. I resorted to blocking entire subnets, and another one would popup, scanning, probing, picking...
And the sources were all over the place. I had one particular night were a California university was picking, and probing, and I blocked that address, and two more from that subnet popped up, and then another one popped up. I was amazed. I figured it had to be a VPN that hacked their subnet. How would a California university be involved in hacking firewalls like that. Weird. But, yeah, South Korean addresses, India, Sweden, on and on... I had a three volume block list in the Ios code for that firewall. I was getting a kick out of seeing these attacks, and watching them react. My point is, it's not 'just Russians' doing the hacking. I had to laugh, we had an elementary school address picking at the Cisco, and I sent an email to their technical contact with the traces, and proof. I wonder if they treated it seriously. Nipping a script kiddie in the bud early might keep him out of jail.
I would expect that most of these higher-level hackers are using a VPN, either legitimate or via a compromised computer. I don't think they'd generally be dumb enough to make their computers discoverable, but I'm sure it happens. But when you see these groups that seem to make headlines for ransomware, they almost always seem to be Russian in origin.