I don't think anyone wants to go to war over something like this. I definitely don't. There aren't a lot of options, though. You definitely can't do "extraordinary rendition" / kidnapping, for example.

One is sanctions against specific individuals, which the US does do. So at least it's harder for them to participate in the international banking system.

And from my understanding, US law enforcement will often try to trick these cybercriminals to travel to a seemingly more neutral country (sometimes areas that are common vacation choices for Russians), where they'll get arrested after arriving. Some of them have gotten nabbed this way - notoriously Alexander Vinnik, the owner of BTC-e and launderer behind the Mt. Gox hack [1], though I'm not sure if he was lured there or just happened to be there. But as long as someone is smart enough to never leave the country, I think they're pretty much untouchable.

General geopolitical pressure and sanctions is probably the only viable option. Keep collecting evidence of the Russian government's permissive stance and bring it to the negotiating table. If enough pressure is exerted, they might eventually relent and actually start cracking down on the big actors.

If they could pressure Russia to permit extradition to the US for serious crimes, that deterrence would probably stop a lot of operations overnight. I doubt that'll ever happen under Putin, though. (And it'd probably be unpopular enough in Russia that I doubt it'll happen under Putin's successors, either.)

[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/russian-national-and-bi...

Go after the financial links. If the only way the ransom can be paid is traveling to Russia with gold bars you’ll see a lot fewer ransoms paid. And before you say cryptocurrency there’s lots of ways Western governments could intervene if they got serious.

>Go after the financial links. If the only way the ransom can be paid is traveling to Russia with gold bars you’ll see a lot fewer ransoms paid.

>And before you say cryptocurrency there’s lots of ways Western governments could intervene if they got serious.

I was definitely gonna say "cryptocurrency". I see absolutely no feasible way that any government could enforce things such that the only way a ransom could be paid would be traveling to Russia and paying the ransomers with gold bars.

I severely doubt any Western government is going to try to ban any cryptocurrency - even Monero. And if they try, enforcement will be extremely difficult.

No matter how hard they make it for a victim to pay a ransom or obtain the assets needed to pay a ransom, a sufficiently desperate victim and a sufficiently greedy ransomer will find a way to make it work.

Perhaps it could realistically help a bit if they threatened victims with prison time for paying ransoms, but in my opinion this would be pretty draconian and wrong - like threatening to imprison someone whose child is kidnapped by a cartel if they pay a ransom to prevent the child from being killed.

Sometimes the victims can be blamed for major negligence, but not always. And even when they are negligent, I don't think they should be punished or prevented from recovering their business in such an extreme way.

I agree that directly threatening victims, even corporate victims, is a bad look. But you need financial intermediaries—-brokers, platforms, exchanges, and these institutions upstream banks, brokers, clearinghouses, and so on. These are exactly the type of institutions that governments can exert a lot of pressure on but so far have mostly declined to do so.

I guess the question is, what does Russia want from the leverage gained from facilitating chaos?

The leverage. One wants the leverage for the leverage. Then you can use it for all kinds of other things, including things you didn't think of before. Like money, save it up and spend on whatever you want at the right time.

There are somethings it needs, and it's actively pursuing them

Warm weather ports is one example