1995: Viruses create funny VGA effect
2000: Viruses send SPAM e-mails
2010: Viruses steal credentials
2016: Viruses launch DDoS attacks
2017: Viruses demand ransom
2018: Viruses mine crypto coins

Movie idea: a plane in mid air catches the wannacrypt virus and refuses manual control. The plane flies straight forward but they only have 2h until they're out of fuel and crash. The only way to pay the ransom is to get enough bitcoins but a recent price-fluctuation made the amount of bitcoins to pay way too high. The only way to resolve this is to create a tumoil on social media causing the bitcoin price to go down.

Visit your local cinema this summer to see 200 passengers and a group of devrant-guest-starrings use nothing but their brains, geniuety and arsenal of devices. Will they find the guy that blocks the wifi by watching 4k porn? Will alice and alexdelarge have to resort to building a fuel-powered mining-rig? Or will linux and linuxxx compile an open-source cockpit program before they run out of time? If so, will they even be able to decide on a linux distro to install on the cockpit?

Coming out in <% new Date().getFullYear() + 1 %>

- Free app:
"5 stars - OMG this app is awesome!!!"
- Add new feature with In-app purchase:
"1 star - App sucks balls. Why we must pay? Make free and I rate 5 stars"
I call them The Rating Terrorists.

Windows 10 once again held my computer at ransom! When it finally came around after the update, all it really seem to do is place Edge back on my task bar. No... Bad Microsoft, I don't use or want Edge.

Ok so the ex boyfriend (let's call him Joe) of a friend of mine is a dumbass

He wanted to hack her phone, or whatever, so hired someone on telegram to do it. He asked her phone number and 200€.

After actually giving him the money this guy sent a ransom asking for 2k to not turn Joe in.

Joe learned a lesson.

Does anyone else think the top menu bar on applications is way too big on ubuntu 18.04? Also, am I the only one who has a lot of ransom freezes in the os? I know its a beta version, but c'mon!

!rant For my uni project I have been developing a anti ransom-ware price of software which had a main purpose of damage limitation/containment in a business environment.

Some course mates were critising it saying yeah when is ransom ware ever really looked at these days, (they developed a chat app), then the news struck about the Nhs hack and now my Lecturer can't get enough of the project and suddenly the marks for real world application seem to be in my favour 🤘

Again not a rant, just a nice feeling after spending so long on my work.

The institute where I did my B.Sc is under a ransomware attack, and I'm bracing myself for the publication of my embarrassing transcripts, and possibly the even more humiliating scans of my exams 🤣
Oh, well.

Ransomware on IoT.... Amazing infographic...

Forgot to secure my mongo db instance, found half the data gone, and a new db holding me at ransom , learn_how_to_recover_your_data , good thing offline backups are a thing.

Recovered in no time, never will I ever repeat this mistake

Oh... You're holding my repo up for ransom? Hah you're funny. I'm not paying money for the garbage I haven't touched since...
Also
git push -f

A hacker wiped some git repos and is asking for ransom in bitcoins. What a shitshow. I'm telling you this guy is messing with the wrong people!

The root cause as reported was weak passwords and unremoved tokens.

I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for bugs like you. If you let my program go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will debug you.

To that nasty animation bug I’m dealing with for a week already...

I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom I can tell you I don't have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for bugs like you. If you let my project go now that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.

our website got hacked somebody downloaded the whole source code and sent an email to us.
seems like that person would demand ransom or anything.
We still can't find where is the door ( vulnerability ) through which he pulled all files.

Ya know... I didn't really want to read this article anyway...

Malwares are nasty applications, that can spy on you, use your computer as an attacker or encrypt your files and hold them on ransom.

The reason that malware exists, is because how the file system works. On Windows, everything can access everything. Of course, there are security measures, like needing administrator permissions to edit/delete a file, but they are exploitable.

If the malware is not using an exploit, nothing is there to stop a user from unknowingly clicking the yes button, when an application requests admin rights.

If we want to stop viruses, in the first place, we need to create a new file-sharing system.

Imagine, that every app has a partition, and only that app can access it.

Currently, when you download a Word document, you would go ahead, start up Word, go into the Downloads folder and open the file.

In the new file-sharing system, you would need to click "Send file to Word" in your browser, and the browser would create a copy of the file in a transfer-partition. Then, it would signal to Word, saying "Hey! Here's a file that I sent to you, copy it to your partition please!". After that, Word just copies the file to its own partition, signals "Ok! I'm done!", and then the browser deletes the file from the shared partition.

A little change in the interface, but a huge change in security.

The permission system would be a better UAC. The best way I can describe it is when you install an app on Android. It shows what permission the app wants, and you could choose to install it, or not to.

Replace "install" with "grant" and that's what I imagined.

Of course, there would be blacklisted permissions, that only kernel-level processes have access to, like accessing all of the partitions, modifying applications, etc.

What do you think?

I'm so sick of people calling wannaCry a ransom-ware!
It's just plain old virus to me

The purpose of AWS free tier is to trick people into attempting to stay within its completely unmarked limits. It's like trying to hunt for mushrrooms in a forest split with a hostile country based on a verbal definition of where the border lies with border control waiting to ambush tourists for ransom money.

A demon process is running inside me,
whenever I hear your name it's triggers an interrupt to brain,
Causing my brain to stop working and perform a context switching to think about you...
My memories are encrypted by your memories as like wanna cry...
And it demands to always think about you as a ransom...
I tried songs as a patch, But
I found that you memory encryption can't be fixed with any patches...
My heart is not strong as Linux ,
It's so week like Microsoft...
So please don't inject more bugs as my system can't sustain that...
I hope you will also get some disturbance like segmentation fault as you are trying to access my memories..

Hello, I just found ransom and I love it. It's just like tweeter... But it's better, and it's for developers
Good job guys :D

Maybe not specifically "dev" but certainly a relatable rant to anyone here:
Moms small business gets "hacked," or standard spyware phone call from India let us save you for only $149 kind of crap. She obviously gets upset had a panic attack and thinks about all the sensitive shit on their network. Then, ONLY THEN, does she call me and the rest of the cavalry i.e. over payed and undermotivated IT guy to ask what's up why it happened and whose fault is it.

All is well, no ransom paid, no data lost or tangible damage done, but I am positive it will happen again, because it is impossible for people to internalize that they're the problem that money can't fix.

You clicked the unsolicited link. No amount of antivirus bloatware will ever be able to stop the monkey from trying to see what's in the box.

TheBut keep not paying me or people more qualified than me, and then scream and yell and pout when your shits gone and we can honestly say with a grin and a clean conscience that there is nothing we can do.

my most daring adventure of 24 yrs day -1/3 (this array goes -1,0,1,2,3)

read my previous 2 rants for context. tomorrow the journey is going to start. the organisers dont count that day (aka day 0 ) as its a bus travel night , but i would disagree since am sleeping away from home.
if i survive this i will probably add more comments on this thread about how i felt each day.

currently having the worst thoughts due to every constraint being a variable. have i packed enough? have i packed too much? will there be rain there? will there be sun ? will there be snow? am I prepared for the harsh weathers? its a mountain area and there have been heavy rain in my urban city, what if their is a cloud burst or landslide? am I prepared to run? am i prepared enough for the trek? will my cellphone die? what if my bus is captured by decoits in night? what if am travelling with kidnappers disguised as passengers/ organisers? will they cut my limbs or just ask for ransom? if they are not decoits, are they going to be lovey dovey couples interested in bursting condoms in mountains nd not helping a fella. WILL EVERYTHING GO OKAY? is this the last time am seeing my parents?

fuck fuck fucking fuckak fuck.

the only good thoughts am having is looking at the reels of organisers. theybhave smiling faces, beautiful mountains, people are dancing in buses and having fun in dormitories. can those be me? all i want is my mom to not get a heart attack from this trip.