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This is really fun to see two ransom threads on top of HN. This one asking for $300 to the NHS and the other one asking for $600 000 to a phone provider. Eith
by user5994461 10y ago
This is really fun to see two ransom threads on top of HN.
This one asking for $300 to the NHS and the other one asking for $600 000 to a phone provider.
Either the criminals have no idea what the NHS is or $300 is the limit of what middle managers can pay without much approval.
- jerf 10y agoIt's almost certainly simply a widely-targeted email that was "intended" to hit individuals via mass spam that happened to hit the wrong individual (who is probably having a Very Bad Day now) and took down the NHS. And my "almost certainly" is really just my inner engineer hedging; the fact that they're asking hundreds of euros worth of ransom for so much is basically proof of what I said. Unfortunately, the state of security right now is such that these wide-band transmissions can still pick up a lot of hits.
- nayuki 10y agoFor reference the other thread is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14325380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14325380 "Telefonica Is Target of $600,000 Bitcoin Ransomware Attack"
- Nadya 10y ago>Hackers are demanding a payment of $300 per machine, roughly equal to 300 Bitcoins currently worth around 510,000 euros. Same cost for Telefonica - just "per machine".