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"indistinguishable from ransomware" would be if you could pay google to free your data. Hyperbolic titles suck
by nightfly 3y ago
"indistinguishable from ransomware" would be if you could pay google to free your data. Hyperbolic titles suck
- eschneider 3y agoSo..."worse than ransomware?"
- dirtyhippiefree 3y agoYou can pay extortionists to get your data back. If your phone automatically factory resets, all the money in the world won’t recover your data…sadly worse than ransomware…
- serf 3y agofrom a data loss perspective, sure. from an extortion perspective i'd rather have my data wiped.
- PeterisP 3y agoWell, no, ransomware is worse than losing all data on the device, since ransomware gangs generally also destroy your backups and also attempt extortion with threats to publish your data. All backups help against accidental destruction and incidents like in this article, but for ransomware protection most cloud storage solutions won't help you, you need either offline or append-only backups.
- gruez 3y agoTechnically yes, but I suspect the ransomware comparison was brought up to paint how malicious it is. Otherwise the better analogy would be dropping your phone from 50ft.
- blibble 3y agoat least the randomware people have someone you can contact
- cafeinux 3y agoWell, NotPetya was a ransomware, yet paying wouldn't have decrypted any data.
- GTP 3y agoIt was actually a wiper.
- PeterisP 3y agoWell, NotPetya obviously was not ransomware, it was malware that masqueraded to pretend to be ransomware.
- cafeinux 3y agoThat asks a question: is a malware defined by its intent, or by what it actually does? Functionally speaking, NotPetya was indistinguishable from a ransomware. It's creators intent however would make it a wiper.
- cageface 3y agoI now ignore all Ron Amadeo articles on Ars. I don’t know where his disdain for Google originated but his predictably snarky dismissals of all things Google are just bad and lazy journalism.
- dirtyhippiefree 3y agoThis is the flipped script for our social contract with Google…they release product, they don’t have any obligation to care about users…dismissing us less loudly than the author, but no less real…
- ColoursofOSINT 3y agoI would rather have ransomware. At least paying would give you a chance to get the data back.