How ransomware could cripple countries, not just companies

IN OCTOBER CYBER-CRIMINALS hacked into the British Library, a storied institution in the heart of London, encrypted its data and demanded money in exchange for the key. Months later the library and its catalogue of 14m books remain offline, with no end in sight. Similar ransomware attacks—in which criminals encrypt or steal data and demand a ransom to decrypt or refrain from leaking it—are not only undermining business and sapping prosperity across North America and Europe. Financially motivated attacks on infrastructure, such as schools, hospitals and power utilities, also pose a large and growing threat to national security. Western countries now face what a British parliamentary committee described on December 13th as “a high risk [of] a catastrophic ransomware attack at any moment”.