Tyler Cowen passes along one:

A new technique of cybercrime is the taking hostage of data.  “I think it’s going to become a more common tactic for attackers,” says Karen Schuler, Senior Managing Director of Kroll.

If the hostage taker has any credible threat then it remains credible whether or not I pay him because there is no way to prevent him from making arbitrary copies of the data.  I can’t “buy them back” in any verifiable way.

The brochure (note that Kroll is a cybersecurity firm) talks about the threat of intellectual property data being stolen and the hostage taker threatening to sell it to my competitors.  If you receive a call with such a threat the first thing you should do is sell your intellectual property to your competitors.  There’s no way you are going to stop the thief from doing the same and you might as well get in on the profits.

On a similar note, these chartered jet passengers didn’t seem to understand the same point.  (Ayam ack:  Josh Gans)

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