Luke Graham — NATO says a 'state actor' was behind the massive ransomware attack and could trigger military response

• NATO says a "state actor" was behind the recent cyberattack.
• The cyberattack could be interpreted as an act of war, triggering Article 5.
• The attack was designed to cause disruption, not to make financial gains, according to experts.

Again, inference without evidence. Belief with a narrative rationale. No trail even. These people are being paid for what exactly?

CNBC
NATO says a 'state actor' was behind the massive ransomware attack and could trigger military response
Luke Graham

Alex Tabarrok — Ransomware Goes Big Time

ArsTechnica: According to the FBI, ransomware payouts in the United States jumped from $25 million in all of 2015 to over $209 million in just the first quarter of 2016.

Clearly, this is just the beginning.

Marginal Revolution
Ransomware Goes Big Time
Alex Tabarrok | Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center and Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and a research fellow with the Mercatus Center

Jacob Kastrenake — Feedly taken down by attackers requesting ransom

The popular RSS reader Feedly has been down for several hours this morning as the result of a distributed denial of service attack, which the perpetrators are allegedly using to extort money from the company. Feedly posted details of the attack on its blog to explain the site's downtime, saying that it's been in contact with law enforcement as well as other victims of the attack. "The attacker is trying to extort us money to make it stop [sic]," Feedly writes on its blog. "We refused to give in and are working with our network providers to mitigate the attack as best as we can."

This type of extortion attempt is said to be far from uncommon, but companies usually aren't eager to discuss it. In one case earlier this year, Meetup was taken down by the same type of attack and asked to pay $300 to make it stop. It's a surprisingly low figure, but the attacker's aim was likely to make it low enough that the company found it easier to just pay up. Feedly hasn't said if its attack is also in this vein. Many have noted that Evernote was also briefly taken down last night from a denial of service attack, but it's unclear if the two attacks are related. For now, Feedly's basic site is up but sluggish, while user accounts still remain unavailable.

Update June 11th, 9:40AM ET: Feedly says that it's working to bring the site back online but that it may take a few more hours. It also notes that no user data was lost or compromised in the attack.

The Verge
Feedly taken down by attackers requesting ransom 
Jacob Kastrenake