Ransomware is a nasty bit of business. Once it infects your computer, it encrypts or otherwise holds your files hostage until you comply with a demand, usually involving forking over your credit card to an Estonian teenager. But there’s one piece of ransomware out there that’s a little more benign, or at least less likely to actually delete your stuff.
Found by Bleeping Computer, for reasons that will quickly become obvious, the ransomware’s demand is that you learn what ransomware is and how to avoid it. It links to both Bleeping Computer’s analysis of common ransomware Jigsaw and Google’s guidelines to staying safe while browsing the internet. Once you do, it gives you the decryption key for your files and sends you on your merry way.
To be fair, many people kind of need this slap upside the head. Clicking on random links from suspicious emails and using bad passwords should be as unpopular as farting in elevators and using your phone at the movies, and yet people keep doing it. Considering how nasty ransomware is, somebody using it to educate the more gullible members of the public is probably a good thing. So, read those articles we linked, since not everybody is as well-meaning as this anonymous hacker.
(Via BoingBoing)