Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin
grubstreet.com
Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin
1–10 of 55 posts
Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin
#2"What the heck is a BitCoin??"
I bet there is no actual extortion going on, but kind of a "let's educate the business owners into the new digital economy, and, if necessary, by force".
The pranksters probably estimate, once the business owners find out what is the idea of Bitcoin, they will say, hey, let's offer this to our customers.
Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin
#3Page has a pop-up with autoplay video ad. No thanks.
Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin
#4I hope they reported that to the police!
Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin
#5My girlfriend's father had a hacker break into their network drive, encrypt all their files, and extort the company for $500 of Bitcoin in exchange for the password...
Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin
#6"What the heck is a BitCoin??" I bet there is no actual extortion going on, but kind of a "let's educate the business owners into the new digital economy, and, if necessary, by force". The pranksters probably estimate, once the business owners find out what is the idea of Bitcoin, they will say, hey, let's offer this to our customers.
Um, no, that's a pretty clear cut example of extortion.
Whether they follow through with the threats or not is irrelevant. The act of extortion has already been committed.
Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin
#7My girlfriend's father had a hacker break into their network drive, encrypt all their files, and extort the company for $500 of Bitcoin in exchange for the password...
That's some cheap-ass pentesting. Here you go buddy! (j/k)
To explain the joke... companies spend tens of thousands doing "pentesting" to stave off vectors for concerted attacks. In this case, they would be spending tens of thousands to prevent the...$500 being extorted. My joke is that it is just as easy to pay the guy $500 for finding the errors. It's just a joke, though. You shouldn't pay extortionists a dime. (Even if that's all they ask for.)
Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin
#8My girlfriend's father had a hacker break into their network drive, encrypt all their files, and extort the company for $500 of Bitcoin in exchange for the password...
Your girlfriend's father opened an email attachment he shouldn't have, you mean?
edit: C'mon, folks. Cryptolocker isn't a bunch of hackers targeting individual network drives. It's spread via email. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryptoLocker
Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin
#9My girlfriend's father had a hacker break into their network drive, encrypt all their files, and extort the company for $500 of Bitcoin in exchange for the password...
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware … or far more entertainingly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reamde (read the novel, not the Wikipedia page)
Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin
#10Obviously the victim isn't the local pizzera its Coinbase. Someone just spent "not very much money" to make them look incredibly bad.
Should be fairly easy to track them down, just analyze the pattern of yellow dots on the color laser print to figure out the make, model, and serial number of the printer making the extortion letters, then contact whichever of coinbase's competitors made those letters and ...
Now if I was thinking a little more clearly I'd figure out how to track them down myself, and let it be known to coinbase's competitor that I'd keep these facts quiet if I was too busy eating pizza bought by, say, 5000 BTC from whichever coinbase competitor made the letters.