Sen. Ron Wyden has joined a growing group of senators pressuring the administration to do more to tackle “ransomware,” a computer virus that renders files unobtainable until a ransom is paid.
The Oregon Democrat on Tuesday sent the FBI a letter seeking information on the bureau’s plans to fight the growing presence of ransomware around the world, which authorities say has cost people tens of millions of dollars.
{mosads}“The FBI should explore all legal options for stopping the successful use of ransomware,” he said in the letter. “Not only should these efforts focus on cyber criminals conducting encryption attacks, they should also target the ransom payments from victims to cyber criminals.”
Wyden’s letter notes that the ransomware victims often pay between $200 and $1,000 to get information unlocked.
“These unexpected costs could be a financial disaster for a family or small business,” he said. “Not only are victims hit in the wallet, they are also burdened with the additional costs of replacing their breached hardware, bringing legal action and updating security for their systems.”
Wyden is seeking details on what advancements the FBI has made in disabling ransomware, whether it has succeeded in identifying suspects behind these attacks and what tools the agency might need to better go after these cyber criminals.
Wyden’s memo builds on a pair of letters that Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) — the top two lawmakers on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — recently sent to the Justice and Homeland Security Departments on the same issue.
The duo is seeking more comprehensive stats on how many ransomware-related crimes the DOJ and DHS have identified since 2005. They also want to know how many ransomware viruses are currently causing harm.
Law enforcement has been combating ransomware for some time. But several incidents within the last few years have shown just how widespread the issue has become.
In 2014, a coalition of U.S. agencies took down a ransomware virus known as “CryptoLocker,” which the FBI estimated had infected 234,000 computers. In a matter of months, cyber criminals had extorted roughly $27 million.
More recently, the FBI identified a CryptoLocker imitator, known as “CryptoWall,” that had driven victims to pay out over $18 million between April 2014 and June 2015, the bureau said.