Over the past 4 years, the U.S. government has made great progress in the ongoing fight against the “ransomware scourge,” as President Joe Biden has described it.

Early in his term, Biden and his administration quickly declared ransomware a national security threat, unlocking recent powers for the military and intelligence agencies. Since then, the United States has successfully disrupted and recovered ransomware infrastructure multi-million ransom paymentsand directed charges and sanctions at some of the most notorious ransomware operators.

Despite government enforcement efforts, the number of cyberattacks targeting U.S. organizations continues to rise, and 2024 shall be one other record 12 months for ransomware. This means that when President-elect Donald Trump returns to office in January, he, too, will inherit a serious ransomware problem.

Although it’s difficult to predict what the next 4 years of cybersecurity policy may appear like, the entire industry is preparing for change.

“It’s hard to say what will happen with policy and regulation in the future because there are so many layers and players involved in the changes,” Marcin Kleczyński, CEO of anti-malware giant Malwarebytes, told TechCrunch. “But I know that cyberattacks will not stop, regardless of who is in office,” Kleczyński said, citing ransomware as the most important problem.

First mixed semester

From a cybersecurity perspective, Trump’s first term as president was a mixed bag. One of Trump’s first (albeit delayed) executive orders after taking office in 2017 required federal agencies to instantly assess cybersecurity threats. Then in 2018, the Trump administration unveiled the U.S. government’s first national cybersecurity strategy in greater than a decade, which led to a more aggressive attribution and shaming policy and a leisure of rules allowing intelligence agencies to “hack” adversaries with offensive cyberattacks.

At the end of 2018, Congress passed the law founding CISAa brand new federal cybersecurity agency tasked with protecting America’s critical infrastructure. The Trump administration tapped Chris Krebs as the agency’s first director, and the then-president fired Krebs two years later in a tweet for saying that the 2020 election – which Trump lost – was “the most secure in American history,” contradicting Trump’s false claims. that the election was “rigged”.

Although cybersecurity hasn’t featured much in Trump’s messages since then, the Republican National Committee, which endorsed Trump for office, said in the 2024 election cycle that the incoming Republican administration will “raise security standards for our critical systems and networks.”

Expect a flood of deregulation

Trump’s push to chop federal budgets as part of a promise to cut back government spending has raised concerns that agencies could have fewer resources available for cybersecurity, potentially making federal networks more vulnerable to cyberattacks.

This is occurring at a time when American networks are already under attack from hostile countries. Federal agencies are warning this 12 months “a broad and merciless threat” by China-backed hackers, most recently raising alarm over the successful infiltration of multiple US telecommunications providers to access real-time call and text message records.

Project 2025, an in depth plan written by the influential conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, which is claimed to serve “wish list” of proposals to be taken up during Trump’s second term, he also wants the president to push for laws that might eliminate the entire Department of Homeland Security and move CISA under the Department of Transportation.

Lisa Sotto, a partner at U.S. law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth, told TechCrunch that deregulation shall be an overarching theme of the Trump administration.

“This could impact CISA’s role in shaping critical infrastructure cybersecurity regulations, potentially leading to an emphasis on self-regulation,” Sotto said.

Referring to recent guidelines proposed by CISA in March which might require critical infrastructure firms to reveal breaches inside three days starting next 12 months, Sotto said these so-called CIRCIA rules “could also be significantly amended to reduce cyber incident reporting requirements and related obligations.”

This could mean fewer required data breach notifications for ransomware incidents and ultimately less visibility into ransom payments, something security researchers have long cited as an issue.

Allan Liska, a ransomware expert and threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, told TechCrunch in October that much of the exertions the United States has done over the past 4 years, including forming a world coalition of governments committed to not pay the hacker’s ransom, you might turn into an early victim of sweeping government deregulation.

“The Global Ransomware Task Force established by President Biden has accelerated many law enforcement efforts by enabling information sharing,” Liska said. “There is a good chance this will go away, or at least the United States will no longer be a part of it,” he said, also warning of the risk of a rise in ransomware attacks with less intelligence sharing.

Are you tempted to do more disruption?

By reducing the regulatory focus, Trump’s second term could pick up where it left off with offensive cyberattacks and take a more aggressive approach to addressing ransomware.

Casey Ellis, founder of the crowdsourcing security platform Bugcrowd, says he expects offensive cyber capabilities to grow in the U.S., including an increased use of hacking attacks.

“Trump has a history of supporting initiatives aimed at deterring enemies of U.S. sovereign security,” Ellis told TechCrunch.

“I expect this will include the use of offensive cyber capabilities as well as an increase in hack-back activities that we have seen in the partnership between the FBI and the Department of Justice over the last several years,” Ellis said, referring to the government’s efforts in recent times years to counteract botnets, DDoS landing pages and malware. “The type of ransomware, first access broker, cybercrime infrastructure, and quasi-governmental operations previously focused on by the U.S. government will continue to be in the spotlight.”

On Thursday, the UK’s largest mobile operator, O2, introduced a chatbot designed to thwart phone scammers. Called “dAIsy”, an imitation of an older woman with loads of time to chat – about knitting, her cat Fluffy – so as to always engage scammers in trying to get her (fake) bank details.

AND press release o O2’s “AI Granny” says it combines “different AI models” that transcribe a caller’s voice into text, then generate a response using a custom large language model, then feed it through a text-to-speech model to produce voice response. The artificial intelligence was partly trained by Jim Browninga “scam” expert with an enormous following on YouTube.

It’s nice to see this in practice. (O2 claims that the audio within the video below is real.) If it really works, even higher. Last yr, the FBI reported that folks over 60 were defrauded of $3.4 billion through wire scams, up from $3.1 billion in 2022. As artificial intelligence and voice impersonation develop into more widespread, these numbers will soon increase.

Xiaodi Hou, co-founder and former CEO of autonomous trucking startup TuSimple, urged a California district court to issue a short lived restraining order to prevent the corporate from moving its remaining U.S. assets to China, according to a recent court filing.

Hou, who plans to file for a short lived restraining order in December at his next scheduled court hearing, hopes to stop TuSimple from moving tens of tens of millions of dollars in money to China. As of September, TuSimple had capital of about $450 million. Hou can be asking for expedited discovery of evidence to support his conclusions.

Hou’s statement to the court is the newest escalation in a dispute between TuSimple and a few shareholders over attempts to use investor capital to finance a brand new business in China related to AI-generated animations and video games.

This is the primary time Hou – who was ousted as CEO in 2022 – has publicly accused TuSimple and its leaders of funneling assets to animation and gaming corporations owned by or with Mo Chen, TuSimple’s co-founder and CEO related. management board under the guise of a business axis. Hou also argued that the corporate violated SEC rules by failing to inform shareholders or obtain shareholder consent before changing its business direction or transferring funds to China.

Hou now heads a brand new autonomous trucking startup in Texas

TuSimple, once valued at $8.5 billion after its 2021 IPO, faced setbacks that led to its U.S. company shutting down and delisting from the stock exchange in January 2024. The company’s stated goal was to commercialize its AV technology in China. However, because the yr progressed, TuSimple reduced its workforce, stopped operating autonomous vehicles, and commenced hiring staff to perform AI-based gaming and animation tasks.

In August, shareholders sent a letter to the board after learning that TuSimple was devoting resources to AI-based games and animations. Management responded a couple of weeks later by publicly announcing the creation of a brand new business unit.

This week, Hou urged the court to issue a short lived restraining order after noting a request filed by TuSimple China that signaled the corporate intended to transfer money (or had already done so) from the United States. TuSimple China’s two subsidiaries saw their assets grow to a complete of $150 million last week, according to Hou’s declaration and data in public documents.

“These statements indicate a suspicious increase in the value of assets registered between these two subsidiaries in a single day, which is a precursor to the transfer of a large amount of cash from the US to China,” the statement said. “The most likely scenario is that the filings in China were a preparatory step before TuSimple US transferred the money to its subsidiaries in China.”

Hou added that such large money transfers “are outside the normal course of business” and are comparable to TuSimple China’s “heyday when the company had a large fleet of autonomous trucks in Shanghai” and employed about 700 employees. In September, TuSimple China had roughly 200 employees.

The opportunity for shareholders like Hou to get what they need – which is to liquidate TuSimple in order that they can recoup a few of their losses – is shrinking.

TuSimple is in a gray area when it comes to Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement. Although TuSimple was delisted earlier this yr, the corporate continues to be registered with the SEC and subsequently subject to U.S. scrutiny. Once the cash goes to China, U.S. shareholders may have no way to get well their original investment.

TechCrunch reached out to the SEC to discover whether the agency is investigating TuSimple over shareholder complaints.

TuSimple didn’t immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.