How an Israeli Hostage Negotiator Outsmarts Ransomware Hackers
Moty Cristal honed his talent for high-stakes negotiations dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah before expanding to talks with ransomware gangs.
Cristal at his office in Tel Aviv.
Photographer: Amit Elkayam for Bloomberg BusinessweekTakeaways NEW
In 2015 cybercriminals targeted several currency trading companies and stole sensitive data, leaving behind a ransom note. They received a frantic response from a woman named Helena, who identified herself as a European executive from one of the companies tasked with handling the negotiations. In increasingly flustered exchanges over WhatsApp, Helena implored them to lower their price.
Unbeknownst to the hackers, the author of the texts wasn’t an executive, wasn’t a woman and wasn’t truly panicking. Behind the screen was actually Moty Cristal, a veteran Israeli hostage negotiator more accustomed to speaking to radicals from Hamas and Hezbollah than criminal gangs. Adopting the Helena persona was Cristal’s first time trying a technique that would become one of his calling cards in a decade-long stint representing global companies in hundreds of high-stakes ransomware negotiations.