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I'm not sure if you're trying to say that the ("cheap lesson to learn") should be paid or not; ≈$1,000 is a lot of money for most people. I think the shock of h

I'm not sure if you're trying to say that the ("cheap lesson to learn") should be paid or not; ≈$1,000 is a lot of money for most people. I think the shock of having to pay it is enough to have the same effect — those affected can then hopefully use the decryption tool without having to directly fund criminals.

geofft 9y ago
The target market of ransomware is supposedly businesses, not individual people—partly because businesses can afford the ransom and have clear incentives to get their data back reliably. I guess I have no idea who it targets in practice. Are there lots of individual home users who fall victim to ransomware?
- yeukhon 9y ago
  Yes. WannaCry is one such. Randsomware is pretty common to home users in the past, at least. Back then it was quite easy to convince someone to click on “Warning! Your computer maybe infected! Try our software” pop-up. Then if your computer gets locked up, the screen will say “call tech support!” There was a claim against Kaspersky [1]. I don’t know if it is really true, but I personally believe that the AV industry does shady things out there, pay some blackhat to spread virus/malware, so consumers can rely on AV. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kaspersky-rivals/exclusive-ex-employees-russian-antivirus-firm-faked-malware-to-harm-rivals-idUSKCN0QJ1CR20150814 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kaspersky-rivals/exclusiv...