[MisterWalter]

1 - Infect a few virtual machines

2 - Collect decryption keys

3 - Laugh at the hackers

Of course not many people out of the general population know how to make a (primarily) windows VM, but I'm surprised that others aren't mentioning it in this thread.

[detaro]

They require that the other people you infect pay the ransom, so you'd still have to pay for the VMs. (Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13147428 and replies)

[MisterWalter]

Whoops, I missed that bit, that would be why. Thanks.