Australia’s Home Affairs Minister said the government is considering just such a move, following a dramatic ransomware attack (where the victim did not pay ransomware and had no cyber insurance).
A recent study reports that ransomware payments are far from guaranteed to produce system recovery.
“(T)he Veeam report said: ‘One of the more notable statistics in the survey is that half (52 percent) of those with encrypted data paid the ransom and were successful in recovery. However, one in four organizations paid the ransom but were still unable to recover their data, while nearly as many were able to recover without paying a ransom.'”
Source: Should Ransomware Payoffs Be Outlawed? — Virtualization Review