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Comment by meowface | Hacker News Reader

Clever idea, but I doubt this would work in 99% of cases.

It's basically a link to an EXE. You could probably only convince someone to run it if you have some acquaintance with them, so obviously they'd hate you afterwards. And you only get the key if they not only get infected, but pay up. And you have to do it twice.

A better method might be "get 5 people infected", regardless of payment.

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> A better method might be "get 5 people infected", regardless of payment.

If you don't require payment, anyone could just spin up five VMs and infect them, then request a decryption key. Not saying these guys are clever or anything and the scheme seems likely to fail for the reasons you mention, but I think something like a "get two other people infected and they pay up" scheme is the most workable version.

Yeah, on second thought you're right.

Then you could just infect 5 virtual machines.

They're probably counting on the average person infected with ransomware not being able to do this

But someone could set up a service where they charge $50 and someone gives them their referral link and they install 5 times from that link.

They have to pay.

meowface said "A better method might be 'get 5 people infected', _regardless of payment_."

Hate them? Somebody could send them to jail as accomplices of the ramsomware guys and that's what those people deserve.

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