Quote:How much would you pay to avoid losing the wedding pictures stored on your computer? What about the financial documents for your small business? Or the first two chapters of the great American novel that you're totally going to finish at some point?

Over the last few months, computer users around the world have been on the receiving end of a particularly troubling threat—pay $300 to a computer hacker who has installed an insidious virus on their systems or lose access to their files forever. The kicker: a ticking clock indicates they only have 100 hours in which to send the money.

The virus is called CryptoLocker. And while the blackmail attempts may initially seem like idle threats, failing to pay could result in the files on hard drive getting cryptographically locked, making them effectively unusable.

Quote:Personally, I am of the opinion that if they catch just one computer criminal and crucify him or her upside down on National TV (should take two weeks for them to die), the cyber-crime problem will go away.

That being said, there is a positive side to this story. The mere presence of this criminal, operating without any apparent restraint, proves that the mighty NSA has wasted all those billions of dollars on their internet surveillance. We know they lied about thwarting terror attacks with their system (they certainly failed to so so in Boston), but if they cannot track down this criminal, it proves their entire system is totally useless, a waste of taxpayer money, and should be dismantled and sold for surplus to help balance the budget.

Who knows, maybe the NSA hired the same software company that did the Obamacare system, and if so, it would explain why computer criminals so easily evade them and why I was able to defeat them in my three NSA challenges!