[notahacker]

Or we could be slightly less nefarious and create ransomware that decrypts everyone's stuff after the allotted time but leaves a congratulatory "thank you for not cooperating with criminals" message to the people that didn't pay...

[pooper]

> Or we could be slightly less nefarious and create ransomware that decrypts everyone's stuff after the allotted time but leaves a congratulatory "thank you for not cooperating with criminals" message to the people that didn't pay...

Please don't do this. People (some would call them victims of cyber crime but not me) are EVIL and if they can trace it back to you, they will sue you. Doing this is not a good idea except as a thought experiment.

It is probably obvious to a lot of people but there are still good people out there who believe in the goodness of people so I thought I should spell it out.

[notahacker]

I agree, creating malicious software designed to seriously inconvenience people and demand money from them is not a good idea. Never mind being sued, creating and distributing viruses is a felony in most jurisdictions even if it doesn't look like extortion. But on a scale of bad ideas, ransomware that appears to reward you for ignoring it is still a slightly less bad way of encouraging people to ignore ransom demands than ransomware that just punishes everyone