I was expecting them to want you to make a donation and send the receipt, but they want you to actually round up less fortunate kids and take them out for pizza. Bizarre.
We similarly did this at a hackathon.<p>> Droplock is a tool to help you when your laptop is stolen... The thief is prompted with an option to donate to charity (through JustGiving, another BattleHack sponsor) or pay the laptop owner directly via Braintree. If they fail to take one of these options, the laptop gets locked down until payment is made.<p><a href="https://dropbox.tech/developers/droplock-a-dropbox-hack-wins-battlehack-la" rel="nofollow">https://dropbox.tech/developers/droplock-a-dropbox-hack-wins...</a>
I can see a younger version of myself making something like this and intentionally letting it slip to the media for attention. I th8nk this line is telling: "Since there are no known victims/ targets for the ransomware group, their Tactics, Techniques and Procedures remain unknown."<p>I don't think there's a risk if any great outbreak here. A bunch of scriptkiddies took some open source project and modified it with some silly instructions.<p>Alternatively, I could see this used in one of those scam calls. They set up remote accesslike normally and then months laltrr the6 infrct their victims and the "trusted Microsoft technician" gives them a call to steal even more off their money. This time there's an actual piece of malware that gets removed, solidifying trust in the scammers even though they were the ones to infect the victims in the first place.
This thing was written by someone who doesn't live in a developed country... There's no way to do those actions in a developed country. Does this person think that just random children are available to be given food to?
Has anyone actually completed the three demands and gotten their data back? As the requests are so bizarre and I'm so cynical it seems more likely they just want you to do silly things after destroying your data.
This is probably obvious to anyone but there isn't anything "good" about this, I expected this to be something along the lines of a crypto donation to GiveDirectly but this is just a sick wannabe Blackmirror power play.
I assumed the "goodwill" would be a donation to an association that would be a front for the hackers to get the money somehow, but it seems that it's really acts of goodwill with no real money flowing, so maybe the hackers actually believe they're doing good ?
Hah, Black Mirror-esque.<p>But well, hopefully it has a IP filter to not hit countries with universal healthcare. /s<p>And asking stranger kids "Hey kids, want some KFC?"... that should go well. "The hacker 4chan made me do it!"
Can I assume that the author of this ransomware is American or at least is very immersed in American culture? Because the activities listed sound very America-centric. I've never seen someone actually sleeping roadside in the cold, and since we have universal healthcare, I've also not heard of someone dying in the hospital because their loved ones couldn't gather up enough money.<p>I guess I might as well just smash my hard drive with a hammer if I get this.
I've been predicting the rise of 'good clans' and 'good mafias' for some time. IMO, as governments become more corrupt, good people will be forced to join clans which adhere to their principles for survival. Power will shift towards clans, mafias and hacker groups.
I've wanted to do a micropayment/paywall system where all the money went to select non-profit options.. paywalls, but not for the host. Paywalls for the world (hunger, climate, etc). Could possibly even have a crypto funnel.
Tangentially, I dislike strongly when people record videos of themselves doing "goodwill" for others—especially for social media; it always reeks [to me] of insincerity. Not to mention the often unwanted spotlight it casts onto the receiver of said goodwill. If one cares, one does acts of goodwill privately, without thinking about how others will react—including and especially—on the internet.<p>"The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching."
― John Wooden<p>edit: taming em-dashes
If only there was universal healthcare, than we wouldn't need private entities coercing individuals to forfeit parts of their paychecks to pay for strangers lifestyles, the government would have rendered that service obsolete! Another win for the free market?
That's an interesting name.<p>>The group’s multiple-paged ransom note suggests that victims perform three socially driven activities to be able to download the decryption key.<p>Wow, just that sentence alone makes a flood of memories come back.<p>(Purposefully doing my morning... executive time... in a place I never went when I was younger to get a fresh look at things.)<p>Just so everyone is on the same page, The Goodwill company is not good at all. They used to be, maybe, but they do this thing where they pay people less than minimum wage who often do their job better than folks with a "normal" IQ.<p>It was also widely known in my hometown if you donate to them, the employees pick off the good stuff so it rarely meets the shelves -- anyone who was a serious computer hobbyist would do deals on Craigslist, since unlike eBay, if someone just starts walking away with your device without paying you can physically stop them or call the cops.<p>I'm an enviornmentalist, I don't believe in getting the newest anything if the old works, so often I'd sell a previous device after doing my best to wipe the hard drive.<p>Only once did I have an issue on Craigslist, and it was after I had moved to a new state.<p>I had someone I sold a cracked iPhone threatening to sue me and a bunch of other nonsense. I told them the ad said as is, and I had assumed they were buying it for the parts, which they paid a more than fair price for, and that it was unsurprising that an iPhone with a cracked screen would fail, and they can meet me at kroger for their money back minus a restocking fee, like you'd expect at Best Buy, if they promise to never contact me again.<p>I picked Kroger because they had an armed security guard, and apparently literally doing the sale inside the lobby of a college town police station wasn't enough to send a message: I am operating in the open, I am giving you a fair deal, we are not friends, and I get very angry when I have to put a bunch of thought into how to convince someone to never make me feel unsafe again.<p>(I'd love to find an analyst role, but I don't know how you land those, my email is in my bio if anyone is having staffing issues and wants to make an offer.)
Right now, most people in the US work for free 3-4 months out of the year via taxes. This is theft as well, but interestingly enough it has a smaller overhead then taxes, which nearly all of the funds are transferred to the 1%.