Behind Closed Cyber Doors: 50 Ransomware Negotiations’ Unexpected Insights

A cybersecurity expert will usually recommend that negotiators should be avoided when trying to resolve the issue of ransomware hackers. A victim recently defied conventional wisdom and attempted to negotiate with their attackers on December 30, 2020, despite their attackers attempting to kill them. 

As the victim typed the words “Help?” At one point during the compromise of the computers, a response was received from one of the hackers offering to negotiate with the victim. During the interview, the hackers admitted that they had encrypted the victim’s network and data in addition to downloading internal documents and files from the victim’s network. As a ransom, they requested a payment of $8,500,000 for the key to unlock the encrypted files. 

Unexpectedly, there was a misunderstanding in the negotiation that led to the breakdown of the deal. As a result, the hackers mistook the victim’s wishes for the destruction of files and did not provide the decryption key to do so. In the end, the ransom demand was markedly reduced, resulting in a final amount of only $450,000 being agreed upon, thereby resulting in a 94.7% reduction from the original demand of $1 million. 

In the case of ransomware incidents, the details are usually shrouded in secrecy and made to remain out of the public domain as long as possible. Despite the secrecy, Valéry Marchive, a French journalist who specializes in cybersecurity, does

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