Hacker News Reader

Comment by dangero | Hacker News Reader

What I find crazy about this -- no guarantee that the ransom payment would unlock the machines -- did they send 1.14M in one go or was it a smaller amount for the first machine, then an additional fee for each additional machine?

Also would be interested to know -- was it Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency that was used?

View on HN

Apparently crypto-ransom people are actually pretty trustworthy about unlocking the machines. It doesn't really cost them anything (0% chance you were gonna send a 2nd payment if they didn't unlock), and their reputation as 'fair' is very important for securing future ransoms.

Someone's gotta be thinking about doing a ransomware operation that doesn't unlock the data in order to poison the well.

It's been done. There was one "ransomware" attack that just erased everything.

NotPetra

That creates an interesting grey hat scenario where a normally good actor could execute a few ransoms and not unlock the machines. Eroding trust in the entire scheme could reduce the long-term effectiveness of the scheme

I have heard that they have really good customer support once the payment has been made.

The FBI's last attempts at breaking crypto rings found that these guys had 24/7 technical support and a phone number you could call that would actually have a person on the other side.

Friend of a friend said it was probably the most "customer" focused organization they've ever fought against

It’s in the best interest of the people who make these types of malware to provide the decryption tools once the ransom is paid.

If news gets out that even if you pay the ransom you won’t get the decryption tools then no one would pay the ransom and the hackers get no money at all.

As weird as it sounds its pretty much in their best interest to send the unlock key because if they don't then people are going to stop paying them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com