Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today we hear from

a hostage negotiator, one of the guys releasing firms from the grip of a ransomware attack.

We recognise that we're paying criminals. I don't want to give them the money any more than the

victim does. It's difficult to me sound. We are going to negotiate in good faith, as if this is a business

transaction.

The scourge of ransomware, a multi-billion dollar business these days, are firms simply helpless?

Or with Bitcoin ransoms, can you follow the money?

One of the best things that we can do is just make it really hard for these people

who are carrying out ransomware attacks to actually cash out. It's that point when they convert

cryptocurrency to US dollars or whatever currency they ultimately want to get to. The ransomware

nightmare, business daily from the BBC. That morning when I arrived in the office, I met the girl on the coffee machine, already angry

because she couldn't log in into the computer, and I went to my desk and tried as well to

log in and just a black screen.

And so I took my coffee and walked over to the IT department and opened the door

there. And I saw a guy, ice white shot. And they told me, listen, I have nothing anymore.

Look here. Here is on that screen. Normally I see all my servers here. They're all gone.

That's Martin Kelterborn, the head of a Swiss office supplies company, who recently

found himself facing every boss's worst nightmare. He'd been hacked, his system frozen, and unless

he paid up, everything in his firm was at the mercy of the criminals. Everything was gone.

Here are a normal Swiss office supply company. Why the hell are you hacking us?

Well, if it's any comfort for this businessman, he's not alone these days.

Good evening. Tonight, federal authorities are investigating a major cyber attack

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