[tracker1]

Cool article... how about "Dead or Alive" bounties for the people responsible? I'm only half joking, but given the distribution of the people responsible, and how much like the "old west" attacks on the internet today seem to resemble, not sure how bad of a solution it would actually be.

[robn_fastmail]

I don't know about bounties, because I'm not personally in favour of vigilantism, but I do take your point.

Honestly, I think the ease in which people can be anonymous is major problem here. Anyone with an internet connection can buy botnet time with Bitcoin and accept a ransom in the same way. It makes it incredibly difficult to follow the path back to the attacker.

At this point pretty much the only thing you can do is collect data and share it with CERT and other relevant law enforcement. I don't have a good sense of how effective they can be, but it makes sense that the more data they have, the better chance they have at identifying specific botnets and follow the path back to the owners.