Bitcoin Forum

Bad Rabbit Bitcoin Ransomware Misery Continues As Hackers Demand $300 in BTC
Over 200 victims in Europe and beyond continue to suffer from a brand new ransomware attack demanding Bitcoin to release encrypted files.

Known as Bad Rabbit, the ransomware of unknown origin demands 0.05 BTC ($290) to unlock infected computers.
Its progress focuses on Russia and Ukraine, with outbreaks also reported in Turkey and Germany, according to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab.

“While the target is visiting a legitimate website, a malware dropper is being downloaded from the threat actor’s infrastructure,” a report on the ransomware released Tuesday explains.

“No exploits were used, so the victim would have to manually execute the malware dropper, which pretends to be an Adobe Flash installer. We’ve detected a number of compromised websites, all of which were news or media websites.”

As of Thursday, it has become apparent those targets fall outside the news and media sphere, with Odessa Airport and the Kiev Metro’s payment system also seeing breakdowns.
Bad Rabbit is just the latest cyberattack to hit the Russian and Ukrainian zone, with WannaCry and NotPetya all having left their mark over the past six months.
The ransom demands from Bad Rabbit’s hackers are similar to those of WannaCry at around $300 per machine.

Considering how unsuccessful WannaCry's ransomware seemed to be, raising such a small amount of money relative to the number of computers that they infected, it's possible that less resources are going to be used on creating these exploits in the long-term future.

The publicity of ransomware attacks will stay super high because of the possibility that it could be used to infect a growing number of individuals and important services, but meanwhile people will carry on keeping backups and ignoring it most of the time.  It could help to encourage taking more regular backups.

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Maybe if they weren't so greedy, people would actually pay it.  Honestly, I don't know whether I would bother with a backup if they asked for $10 or so.

Yeah, most people do not have information in their computers worth that much, at best they have some pictures that are impossible to replace but that is it, but I think this is precisely why they are asking for such a big sum of money, only people with valuable information are going to be willing to pay for any information in their computers and the rest are collateral damage to them.