What you say is untrue. Black hats have done things on this scale for as long as this scale has existed.
RATs, malware, spam, ransomware, scareware, worms, all this existed in the largest scale possible before the advent of crypto currency.
Doxing, messing with people, leaking sensitive files, pictures and other media, has existed on massive scale before crypto currencies.
It's the scale of the internet itself, and the amount of money involved, and the fragility of connected systems, that has lead to the increase.
I'll grant that cryptocurrency adds even more of this badness. It's definitively increased the number of bad actors. But this is not the driving cause.
Their 'obvious role' is only a role for some actors. Not everyone is financially motivated.
It's also easily measurable, the revenue of a ransomware-as-a-service group (this exists) is an easy jaw-dropping number to display.
But that number does not capture the damage done by actors not financially motivated. Hell _the_ largest and _most_ devastating attack ever was not financially motivated at all. I'm of course talking about NotPetya. Whose damage and impact easily dwarfs that of the financially motivated ransomware groups.
RATs, malware, spam, ransomware, scareware, worms, all this existed in the largest scale possible before the advent of crypto currency.
Doxing, messing with people, leaking sensitive files, pictures and other media, has existed on massive scale before crypto currencies.
It's the scale of the internet itself, and the amount of money involved, and the fragility of connected systems, that has lead to the increase.
I'll grant that cryptocurrency adds even more of this badness. It's definitively increased the number of bad actors. But this is not the driving cause.
Their 'obvious role' is only a role for some actors. Not everyone is financially motivated.
It's also easily measurable, the revenue of a ransomware-as-a-service group (this exists) is an easy jaw-dropping number to display.
But that number does not capture the damage done by actors not financially motivated. Hell _the_ largest and _most_ devastating attack ever was not financially motivated at all. I'm of course talking about NotPetya. Whose damage and impact easily dwarfs that of the financially motivated ransomware groups.