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Would they make more money if they demanded $10 instead of $300? While $300 isn't crazy money, it's more than enough to be painful, and definitely feels like ra
by mootothemax 9y ago
Would they make more money if they demanded $10 instead of $300? While $300 isn't crazy money, it's more than enough to be painful, and definitely feels like ransom.
I wonder how many people facing a locked computer would sigh, say a few choice swearwords, and dig out their cards had it been a relatively low amount.
- vec 9y agoAsking to get paid in Bitcoin is already a stiff barrier to entry for most users, so probably not. $300 feels close to the upper threshold where people who already care enough to not balk at the Bitcoin requirement also won't balk at the sticker price.
- mootothemax 9y agoAhh, yeah you're totally right, I keep forgetting that the victims need to pay with bitcoin. Well. I guess it's good that there's not a more convenient way to give in to the criminals' demands!
- tyingq 9y agoThey probably would have made more by being quiet about the infection and renting it out as a botnet, or selling whatever interesting data they found.
- paulgb 9y agoThey passed up a good opportunity for price discovery: have the ransomware pick a random number between, say, 10 and 1000 and learn from that for future attacks.
- DenisM 9y agoThey could also make a machine learning model to take into account the part of the world, the hardware model, and other wealth indicators.
- funnyfacts365 9y agoReally?
- occamrazor 9y agoOther ramsomware authors did this. I remember reading that the optimal amount is somewhere between 300 and 500$, but i can't find a source anymore.