In connection with frequent cyberattacks by hackers using ransomware, a US Senate committee wants to elevate these crimes to terrorist threat. Such legislation will be the first in the country to directly tie extortion with terrorism.

The US Senate has proposed to treat extortion by ransomware attacks as terrorism, which could be a turning point in the fight against cybercrime. This was reported by the publication Cyberscoop in early August 2024.

The initiator of the bill was the committee chairman Mark Warner. The bill contains new wording regarding ransomware. Hackers or groups using these viruses will be classified as hostile foreign cyberterrorists. Those countries that harbor these hackers will be designated as state sponsors of ransomware. The United States will have every right to impose sanctions against such states. 

The Senate Intelligence Committee proposal, if passed, would be the first U.S. law to directly link ransomware to terrorism. It would authorize the President of the United States to impose sanctions on countries as state sponsors of terrorism. Additionally, the Secretary of the Treasury would be tasked with reporting to Congress the number and geographic locations of individuals, groups, and organizations involved in ransomware that are subject to sanctions.

However, experts are skeptical that the move will have the desired effect. Imposing additional sanctions on state sponsors that are already subject to significant sanctions and are unlikely to be deterred by new ones. The bill would do little to change the behavior of hacker groups that engage in ransomware. But experts caution that by listing a group of 18 particular ransomware groups the legislation may fail to account for the fluid nature of the cybercriminal underground. Ransomware groups are frequently the subject of law enforcement take-downs and frequently disband, only to regroup again as different entities or under various names.

According to CyberScoop, the bill ultimately represents an acknowledgement of the economic damage that ransomware causes to the United States and its allies. At the same time, the bill points out that there are countries around the world, particularly North Korea, that earn significant amounts of their gross domestic product (GDP) by being state sponsors of hackers. 

Emsisoft threat analyst Luke Connolly said that the full force of the U.S. intelligence community will now potentially be directed at hackers who use ransomware. Connolly believes that attackers should think twice about attacking something as important as hospitals, where lives are at stake.