Ransomware criminals chatting up Attack.Ransom victims , offering to delay deadlines , showing how to obtain Bitcoin , dispensing the kind of customer support that consumers lust for from their cable and mobile plan providers , PC and software makers ? Finnish security vendor F-Secure yesterday released 34 pages of transcripts from the group chat used by the crafters of the Spora ransomware family . The back-and-forth not only put a spotlight on the gang 's customer support chops , but , said a company security advisor , illustrated the intertwining of Bitcoin and extortion malware . `` We should be thankful that there are at least some practical barriers to purchase Bitcoins , '' wrote Sean Sullivan of F-Secure in a Wednesday post to the firm 's blog . `` If it were any easier to do so , very little else would check the growth of crypto-ransomware 's business model . '' Sullivan originally penned that conclusion last month , in a short section of the `` State of Cyber Security '' report that F-Secure published then . Yesterday , F-Secure posted the transcripts , 20,000 words or more , and dubbed the collection a `` new supplemental appendix '' to the original report . In one exchange , a Spora victim said he or she had paid the extortion fee Attack.Ransom , but had gotten nothing in return . `` The malware technology to encrypt data has been possible for many , many years ; the bigger challenge has always been getting paid , '' Sullivan pointed out . `` In the past , cyber-crime schemes ( such as scareware ) have been killed off by disrupting the money supply . The same may well be true of cyber extortion Attack.Ransom ; to kill the business model , it may be necessary to ban Bitcoin . ''