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> Why openly announce that you're paying the ransom? An effective thing they could have done is to announce that they paid the ransom, but that the decryption
by cantrevealname 10y ago
> Why openly announce that you're paying the ransom?
An effective thing they could have done is to announce that they paid the ransom, but that the decryption did not work (even though it did).
That has the advantage of discouraging other people from paying up, and therefore reduces the incentive to create more ransomware attacks.
Hell, the government could step in and recruit people and companies to falsely claim that they were ransomware victims who paid up, but never got decryption keys and were screwed over. That could put a damper on ransomware psychology.
Thinking about it further however, this will probably lead to better "customer service" by the ransomware makers. They'll adapt their software to selectively decrypt part of your data for free, so they can offer you proof that that they can and will give your working keys once you pay up.
- deciplex 10y ago> Hell, the government could step in and recruit people and companies to falsely claim that they were ransomware victims who paid up, but never got decryption keys and were screwed over. That could put a damper on ransomware psychology. This actually did happen to me. Paid the money, got the key, couldn't unlock my files. Damn shame.
- cantrevealname 10y agoI'm sorry to hear that. Being Hacker News I think we'd all be very interested if you are able to share some details such as: - how your system got compromised? - did you have backups? (and did the backups get encrypted?) - how much did you pay and by what method? - why do you think the key didn't work? EDIT: It now occurs to me that you're following my suggestion about falsely claiming to be a ransomware victim to discourage ransom payments. Whoosh!
- jstanley 10y ago> you're following my suggestion about falsely claiming to be a ransomware victim effective, isn't it!
- simonh 10y agoI see what you did there.
- skoczymroczny 10y agoOr review sites of ransomware. "5/5, would get encrypted again"