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I'd never heard of this historical precedent: > The father of ransomware was Harvard-educated anthropologist Joseph L. Popp Jr. While researching the theory th
by hcs 7y ago
I'd never heard of this historical precedent:
> The father of ransomware was Harvard-educated anthropologist Joseph L. Popp Jr. While researching the theory that AIDS originated in green monkeys in East Africa, Popp in 1989 mailed more than 20,000 floppy disks about AIDS education to people interested in public health. When recipients ran the disk, their computers froze, and a message on the screen instructed them to send up to $378 to a post office box in Panama for a second disk that would restore their access.
- john-radio 7y agoHoly crap, that message: > ATTENTION I have been elected to inform you that throughout your process of collecting and executing files, you have accdientally ¶HÜ¢KΣ► yourself over: again, that's PHUCKED yourself over. No, it cannot be; YES, it CAN be, a √ìτûs has infected your system. Now what do you have to say about that? HAHAHAHAHA. Have ¶HÜÑ with this one and remember, there is NO cure for AIDS.
- ghevshoo 7y agoI found this interesting story with details about how he was caught, set free, and left behind an unusual legacy including founding a eponymous butterfly conservatory. https://medium.com/un-hackable/the-bizarre-pre-internet-history-of-ransomware-bb480a652b4b https://medium.com/un-hackable/the-bizarre-pre-internet-hist...
- hcs 7y agoInteresting, thanks! This reminds me of all the random shareware we'd get on floppies in the early 90s, Apogee and such.
- ummwhat 7y agoI choose to believe he made the computer virus as an abstract metaphor for aids.