Public Site Now Tracks Ransomware Payments

Ransomware attacks are becoming more frequent. World leaders are taking notice, but have yet to devise an effective response. A security expert who works with the Krebs Stamos Group and the US Defense Digital Service has launched a site to keep a public record of bitcoin payments to key ransomware gangs. It is an open, crowdsourced payment tracker that shows victims’ payments in bitcoin to wallets linked to a dozen major ransomware variants. The payment figures can be broken down by this year, this month, this week and all time. The rationale is that without such data, the full impact of ransomware is unknowable. So is whether taking certain actions can change the dynamic, which now favors ransomware gangs. The site is public. Anyone can view and download the data, and anyone can submit reports of ransomware they’ve been infected with. It calculates the dollar value of bitcoin payments based on the day a payment was made. Therefore it is an estimate of how much victims paid, but not how much ransomware gangs sold it for.