Quantum Resilient Encryption Technology vs. Ransomware

In the digital era of increasing cyber attacks, the Cyber Security Global Alliance has investigated real solutions. A super-cluster company in Canada has created possibly the first true answer to countermeasure ransomware. This countermeasure (which has been proven by a leading Canadian Polytechnic University in Saskatchewan) was designed and manufactured to be the world’s first superior commercial-grade quantum resilient encryption software. Originally designed for the military and commercial drone communications, this technology was reconfigured into a Windows-based Enterprise technology that is compatible with Linux, Android, and Apple technologies.

This technology was manufactured, designed, and built by our Canadian business partners Chad Wanless and Dave Palachik (represented by Terranova TCU Communications and Terranova Cyber Solutions) working in advanced cybersecurity manufacturing. As the world plummets into cyber and ransomware attacks, the world needs a Superhero, and that Superhero is CEW Systems Canada and its encryption tool – Bi-Symmetric handshake.

CEW Systems Canada is a Global Partner of the TCU Alliance, which stands for (T)erranova TCU Communications (C)EW Systems Canada and Our (U)nited Partnership has paved the way to a global response team. The TCU Alliance has already expanded into the unmanned and autonomous vehicle sector, automobile industry, aerospace, and defense, and into future technologies such as hypersonic technologies and missile defense systems. CEW Systems Canada is the future defender against electronic warfare and the next generation of quantum resilient cyber defense systems.

CEW encryption solutions is defined as a quantum resilient encryption algorithm designed to encrypt and decrypt data that is being transmitted via the Bi-Symmetric handshake. The solution is ideal for all unmanned as well as manned vehicle communication to prevent cyber-attacks from all computers, including supercomputers and upcoming quantum computers. These computers will soon be able to execute brute-force attacks against intercepted encrypted data. On December 3rd, 2020, in the journal Science, scientists from China built a photonic quantum computer that they claimed to be ~10^14 times more powerful than the third most powerful supercomputer.

The integrated cybersecurity solution proposed within will include internal and external communication encryption using CEW Systems Canada’s Bi-Symmetric Encryption software. It uses challenge and counter challenge codes to exchange public keys using private keys. This ensures listening parties (potential attackers) will be unable to ascertain the contents of the encrypted data and/or to send unwanted commands designed to interrupt on-boards activities or systems.

Ransomware  

Ransomware has become a flourishing, global, criminal industry. In just a few years the scale and severity of attacks has grown at an alarming pace as cyber criminals look to exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities to maximise profit worldwide.  It is a crime without frontiers as a single attack can rapidly spread across borders, with devastating effects, an example in point is the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack that affected 150 countries.

Ransomware is a form of cybercrime, a highly sophisticated, highly lucrative, and evolving white-collar crime that not only risks the personal and financial security of individuals, but also threatens national security and human life. Businesses, schools, governments, hospitals, critical infrastructure and entire cities are now regularly targeted, their networks disrupted, and held hostage. 

It is a type of malware – software designed to cause harm to a computer or a computer network for financial profit.  The malware is designed to encrypt files on a device, rendering them unusable. Malicious actors then demand ransom in exchange for decryption.

By the end of 2019, such was the level and sophistication of ransomware, that cyber security analysts began referring to it with terms normally used for legitimate business models; a ‘service market’, a big business market, a ‘big game hunting’ market for criminal groups run as professional organizations.

The “ransomware as a service” (RaaS) model in particular allows criminals without technical sophistication to conduct ransomware attacks anywhere in the world. And, at the same time, technically knowledgeable criminals are conducting increasingly sophisticated attacks fueled by the ransom payments.

• Current Challenges
• Ransom Payments
• Lack of legal clarity and certainty/ Sanctions Compliance

For anyone in the private or public sector who has been the victim of a ransomware attack, the question of whether to pay or not to pay the ransom becomes an existential one. Faced with such a predicament, it is important that a clear and internationally recognized legal framework is put in place that will create legal certainty on such a pressing issue. Presently there is no such legal framework in place. No international or indeed national law enforcement agencies have reached a consensus on whether such a payment should be made illegal, a decision which will undoubtedly involve difficult policy considerations.

Presently, victims agonizing about whether they should proceed to engage with attackers do so in a legal vacuum and may expose themselves to unwanted liability if they are not sanctions compliant.

Making a ransom payment per se is not unlawful. However, the current legal position is far from clear, or reliably consistent, due to varying global laws.

This Summary is a brief overview of a full whitepaper published by the Global Foundation for Cyber Studies and Research.