
Don't pay off Ryuk ransomware, warn infoseccers: Its creators borked decryptor - LinuxBender
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/10/ryuk_decryptor_broken_latest_strain/
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scarejunba
Perhaps we should release dirty ransomware that takes your money and doesn't
unransom. Poison the well for ransom so everyone believes it's all a scam.

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krilly
Was this accidental or intentional? Russia has recently been distributing fake
ransomware in Ukraine which is intended to cause economic damage rather that
generate profit.

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asymptotically2
It would be cool if somebody created some provably fair ransomware that used
Bitcoin script or zero knowledge proofs or something. You pay the coins and
are guaranteed the (correct) decryption key.

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friendly_fren
It would be cooler if someone cloned existing ransomware and took payment and
never decrypted files. Then people would stop paying and stop encouraging it.

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ubu7737
Seems pretty easily-fixable, if it's just one byte.

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dTal
Mmm maybe, but also:

"Victims who pay the ransoms are very likely to be funding the North Korean
hereditary dictatorship, which actively practises all kinds of organised,
deliberate barbarity"

So it's probably good to promulgate the idea that it doesn't even work - if no
one pays the ransom, the ransomware will die. That's why it's in the creator's
interest to make a working decryptor in the first place.

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setr
Well, the ransomware will continue spreading, if it operates autonomously,
independent of whether the decryptor works. New ransomware might not be
created however

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panarky
I've heard that Ryuk is highly targeted, usually a manual secondary attack on
enterprises that can afford a much higher ransom than normal. So it's probably
not autonomous, and its reputation for unreliable decryption after payment
should make victims less willing to pay.

