Immoral criminals? Now I've seen everything.

The point is that there are surely targets that are better funded and thus more likely to pay out larg sums of money in order to fix things.

Definitely, but ransomware groups generally have incremental customer acquisition costs/margins that most other industries can only dream of. They'll encrypt first, ask questions/set prices later. The whole process might even be fully automated at this point, "thanks" to cryptocurrencies.

I remember hearing that they do have customer support, though! Not sure if you can escalate to a sales rep to get a personalized quote or non-profit discount from there.

I think Darknet Diaries talked about that. I don't remember what episode.

> Not sure if you can escalate to a sales rep to get a personalized quote or non-profit discount from there.

some groups offer it (not out of goodness: rather on price discrimination grounds)

Many companies now pay for this kind of insurance. So even though the company may not seem like they have the deepest pockets, it's really more about paying the insurance premiums and the insurer pays the ransom.

I recall a colleague whose firm was hit by a ransomware attack. When they reached out to the insurer and sent them the details of the attackers, the first response from the insurance agent was, "Oh good, they are a reputable group. We've worked with them in the past. They will simply take the ransom and return your network/files to you." My colleague was shocked by the nonchalance.

Ransom insurance seems more like another part of the problem than the solution.

Can vouch for customer support, they need you to believe that they can actually unlock things when paid. They'll work with you to run a trial/demo to unlock a handful of files and generally will bend over backwards to make sure the "end user" has enough faith that they will get their data back in order to convince them to send the payment.

Really? Have you seen a man eat his own head? No? So then you haven't seen everything. And neither have I.

Just so that people get the reference: https://youtu.be/sBrAfJs0xR0

Right? Like what are they going to delete? The digital books? Who had what checked out?

Kind of like "erase the debts" from Fight Club? "Haven't returned that digital book? Keep it!"

I highly doubt it was targeted.

i bet Sam is getting some e-books /j

lol

A California nonprofit's computers were once stolen only to be returned by the thieves.

That would also have arguably been more risky of a redemptive act than the right thing to do in this circumstance.

Referring to this? https://www.huffpost.com/entry/thieves-apology-note-san-bern...

I am not a crook, but sounds like it was a pretty high-skill thief. So relatively low risk - and catching & punishing that thief mighta been a pretty low priority for everyone from the on-shift cops to the most idealist juror.

That's the one!

Agreed. This is just shitty. Libraries are one of the few things holding the world together right now, and no they don't make tons of money...

Yeah. But if 0.1% of humans are in the bottom 0.1% for personal morality, and there are more than 8 billion humans on the Earth...

and nobody spends their own resources or credit holding others accountable…

Ailing Mrs. Cas tottered back to her small apartment from the failed book ban, her request to her YottaGPT to find a way to stop the center's library never quite settling in as a memory.

She thought of the tapioca she'd be served for lunch.

The libraries here have figured out that no one votes against library taxes and have built up a $250 mil slush fund on top of all new facilities and so many unnecessary "services" that they have a full fledged advertising campaign to tell people about these things they didn't even know they need.

They really are looking for a reason to exist in the digital age.

That sounds awesome!

A beloved public institution, that improves society as a whole, is equally available to all, has enough money to do their mission well offer auxiliary services and to take advantage of PSA programs?

What a treasure.

I have never seen a service the library provided that I didn't think was at least marginally worth throwing some tax cents to provide for free for people that need it. I looked at the NYPL services page https://www.nypl.org/help/services and none of it looked not useful. Were any of them necessary? I mean, probably not in the way nobody needs a library, only that libraries are a fundamentally good service to a community.

I say this as a government-skeptical conservative: libraries are a great use of taxpayer money. Of all the things that people can vote to tax themselves for, here’s something that everyone can use. It’s great.

Many other uses of tax dollars are handouts for a very small number of people that most of us see no benefit from (and may even have side-effects that make things worse for everybody else).

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if automated AI agents are probing vulnerabilities and following a preset playbook for extortion without any human involvement.