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INTEREST: Bored College Student Accidentally Infects Self, Others with Touhou Project-inspired Ranso




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DLH112



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 115
PostPosted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 2:14 pm Reply with quote
It's Undefined, not Unidentified... though it's close enough in meaning I guess.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 2:23 pm Reply with quote
OK, sympathies to all involved and everything, but putting that aside, I can't help but laugh at how bizarre this all is.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11601
PostPosted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 7:01 pm Reply with quote
I suppose there's some karmic justice in that the idiot infected his own computer, but that's the sort of "joke" that gets people killed if he failed to cover his tracks and didn't have a fix for it right away. I wouldn't be surprised if he still didn't have people attacking him or his computer even after the fix.
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CatSword



Joined: 01 Jul 2014
Posts: 1489
PostPosted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 7:06 pm Reply with quote
Oh god, I would be so screwed. I can't even beat the regular level for songs in Love Live. Embarassed
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 11:41 pm Reply with quote
How does the antidote even work for infected computers? I can understand how the antidote would stop any more computers from getting infected, but for the ones that were already caught, what will they do? Isn't the idea behind ransomware being that the program prevents you from using your computer until you do some particular thing? Would infected computers even be able to get to GitHub and get the antidote? There'd probably be some people whose first response is to that it to a computer repair place and may still be waiting to get their computers fixed not knowing the antidote exists (though chances are they'd find out before long through some other device).
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 5:52 am Reply with quote
It sounded like it just locks up your files. You have to be able to use your computer to play the game, so it can't disable it completely.
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Mr. Oshawott



Joined: 12 Mar 2012
Posts: 6773
PostPosted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 8:00 am Reply with quote
A malware prank gone terribly wrong...I wonder how serious this Rensenware virus is...
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 11:23 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
It sounded like it just locks up your files. You have to be able to use your computer to play the game, so it can't disable it completely.


Okay. It doesn't lock your computer's ability to go online then? I had the impression that playing this game would be the only thing you'd be allowed to do until you reached 200 million points.
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Gina Szanboti



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PostPosted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 7:48 pm Reply with quote
I don't think so. Even malicious ransomware needs you to go online to pay them and receive the unlock code, doesn't it (I hope to never find out)?
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 8:00 pm Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
I don't think so. Even malicious ransomware needs you to go online to pay them and receive the unlock code, doesn't it (I hope to never find out)?


Yeah, I don't have the experience of being struck by ransomware either (and I'll cross my fingers that it doesn't happen). My impression was that the ransomware itself would provide you with the path to go pay them or something, a path laid out for you to go to a specific destination without allowing you to interfere with anything else, but I suppose that might be a lot more complex than the people who make them would prefer.

I HAVE been struck by malware that outright replaces certain webpages with links to go buy stuff though (which I'm certain is all fraudulent). That is, any time you'd try to access that page, you'd be given the full-window advertisement instead. I learned that it was messing with my cache and that if I cleared it, it would go away, though it would eventually find some other webpage to turn into its ad, and it kept getting increasingly worse as time went on, with it changing more and more pages I visited into that same ad until I ran out of patience, picked up some anti-adware programs (after looking up which ones were trustworthy), and got rid of it for good. I'm sure if I waited for too long, it would have prevent me from accessing ANYTHING online except for itself.

Since whatever that was had been restricting my use of the Web until I paid them (or not, I'm not sure--I never clicked on the link), I thought ransomware could work on a similar principle, only it's a blanketwide lockout of everything but the means to pay the people. Someone with more computer knowledge than me would have to clear things up though.
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