Pax Mafioso: The geopolitical side to the Medibank ransom attackThe ransom attack on Medibank involving the personal information of nearly 10 million Australians has exposed another front in the geopolitical confrontation between Russia and the world.While there has been no explicit political messaging surrounding the Medibank hack, the behaviour of Russian ransomware gangs has changed over the past year, becoming more aggressive and brazen towards their Western targets.Before the war in Ukraine began, Russian authorities arrested more than a dozen members of the REvil gang in a move interpreted at the time as a gesture that Moscow would take US concerns about Russia’s ransomware gangs seriously.The UN, for example, has concluded that North Korea has hacked about half-a-billion dollars in cryptocurrency that was then used “to support its nuclear and ballistic missile programs to circumvent sanctions”.The taskforce will also “take joint steps to stop ransomware actors from being able to use the cryptocurrency ecosystem to garner payment.”Australia, as the inaugural chair for the international taskforce, will lead efforts to “co-ordinate resilience, disruption, and counter illicit finance activities” among member countries."