Never underestimate what a person can come up with when he or she is bored as was recently highlighted by the accidental release of a ransomware that required victims to reach an astronomically high score on an anime-style shooter game instead of paying an outrageous ransom in bitcoins.The Malware Hunter Team was surprised to discover Rensenware; they said the ransomware did not ask “for any money, but to play a game until you reach a score – and it’s not a joke.”Victims who wanted their files decrypted were required to score over 200 million points in the “lunatic” level of the game TH12 ~ Undefined Fantastic Object.Found a surprising ransomware today: "rensenWare".Not asks for any money, but to play a game until you reach a score - and it's not a joke./Pu53WZFALA — MalwareHunterTeam (@malwrhunterteam) April 6, 2017The ransom demand on the lock screen stated: Minamitsu “The Captain” Murasa encrypted your precious data like documents, musics, pictures, and some kinda project files.

It can’t be recovered without this application because they are encrypted with highly strong encryption algorithm, using random key.As for how the files can be recovered, the creator of Rensenware wrote: “That’s easy.You just play TH12 ~ Undefined Fantastic Object and score over 0.2 billion in LUNATIC level.This application will detect TH12 process and score automatically.DO NOT TRY CHEATING OR TERMINATE THIS APPLICATION IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BLOW UP THE ENCRYPTION KEY.”The Malware Hunter Team, however, noted that victims could edit their scores without consequences.Anime is not my thing and I’ve never played this game, but lunatic difficulty level is presumably like hard mode on steroids; there are scoreboards showing that at least some people have managed it.The ransomware was created to automatically check memory to make sure a victim reached the required level and score and would then decrypt files; once the score was reached, it also provided a way to manually decrypt files in case any were missed.A Korea-based undergraduate student, who goes by Tvple Eraser on Twitter, was the mastermind of Rensenware; he did so because he “was bored” and it was meant to be a joke.

He told Kotaku that he fell asleep after releasing his joke on GitHub; when he woke up, his malware had spread.“He’s not sure how many were affected, but added that, in the programming process, he’d accidentally infected himself.When asked whether he could score 0.2 billion himself, the creator said, ‘Uh, oh….Nope’.”Tvple Eraser then wrote an apology and created a tool which is like a cheat engine for the game as it would write a score high enough to force decryption.He said he was “really sorry” for shocking and annoying people with Rensenware.He “made it for joke, and just laughing with people who like Touhou Project Series,” and realized he should have removed the encryption/decryption logic before distributing the source code.He took down the source code and provided the decryption tool for victims infected with Rensenware./LrapKv5Dm3 — MalwareHunterTeam (@malwrhunterteam) April 7, 2017On Sunday, he then released a Rensenware protector that is not meant for already-infected machines.

He has promised to never again “make any malware or any similar thing.”When Rensenware was released, it would crash if conditions were not just right such as if it detected an optical drive that couldn’t be encrypted.If conditions were right, then a PC infected with it would require the victim to go download the game if they didn’t have it and play until the specified level and score was reached.julian mautner bitcoinYou can see the crash, see the game and see the decryption tool work in danooct1’s video.Perhaps the most worrying aspect of Rensenware is that between the time it was released and then the source code was yanked, it got out there in the interwebs.bitcoin lottery miningIt may, or may not, inspire a ransomware author to tweak it or otherwise innovate and make it deadlier.trace mayer bitcoin

)submitted by π Rendered by PID 130406 on app-281 at 2017-06-23 23:56:19.800235+00:00 running 3522178 country code: SG.By on June 8, 2017You can read Part 1 and Part 2 for the full context: Convincing Malaysian big businesses to adopt cryptocurrencies is a like engaging in an exasperating chicken-and-egg debate.They will be asking: What is the regulatory framework?Who are the service providers?To which the only way we can reply is: Do it and they will come!You can imagine how unpopular this sounds in the boardroom.From their perspective, the marginal benefits of accepting cryptocurrencies today does not compensate for the significant uncertainties that come with implementation.Hence as cryptocurrency enthusiasts, we need to acknowledge that our holdings will not be directly spendable “out there” anytime soon.Not only are there myriad workarounds, but shoving cryptocurrencies down the throat of corporate Malaysia is missing the point.We neither have an unbanked problem nor a banking crisis; i.e.

there is not much to complain about with the current local financial system.So if we thoughtlessly echo the battle cries appropriate in other markets over here, we are going to sound like lunatics.That being said; if we want to produce a mature Malaysian cryptocurrency ecosystem, then we must ensure our cryptocurrencies circulate around, and not just idling in everyone’s private vault.We do need to convince users to spend their holdings, and we do need to convince sellers to accept them.Otherwise we will only succeed in producing a community of speculators.Since Malaysian big businesses are unlikely to support our agenda for now, we need to facilitate this circulation via an alternative strategy.Remember that cryptocurrencies enable seamless, frequent online transactions between individuals, or even between autonomous machines; a breakthrough we should leverage to create new, blue-ocean markets.Such “peer-to-peer” online commerce has been around for a while (just look at all the Malaysians selling stuff on Facebook), but buyers and sellers in this space lack the sophisticated back-end systems of large e-commerce players.

These are not highly automated operations – oftentimes terms are discussed and sales closed through direct negotiations between buyer and seller right within chat applications.However with extreme personalization comes friction and scalability issues, especially when it comes to payment.An ad-hoc entrepreneur interested in selling some home-made lemang through Facebook during Ramadan wouldn’t bother setting up a legal entity, much less a merchant account to accept credit cards – hence would need to rely on cumbersome online banking transfers from his customers.I believe it is in these situations where cryptocurrencies can shine.Imagine if we have for example… a widget that generates a self-destructing QR code out of a cryptocurrency address embeddable in WhatsApp or Facebook chat.Sellers can then share payment details and confirm receipt of any value from any customer in real time.This significantly cuts through the payments inconvenience for buyers and sellers alike in “peer-to-peer” online commerce.

It is often the simplest technology that achieved the most widespread adoption.Cheap, QR-code enabled peer-to-peer micropayments area already exploding in China (albeit these are driven by centralized providers).Since I don’t see a prevalence of these solutions in Malaysia yet, it is a golden opportunity for cryptocurrencies to take the ball over here and just run with it.The beauty of peer-to-peer commerce is that it can grow with minimal regulatory and support systems oversight, but it will not produce the quantum leap in adoption that we need.Eventually we as the community will have to go back to courting those finicky Malaysian big businesses.The good news is, once we have a vibrant peer-to-peer commerce scene, the answer to the “Where are the users?” question becomes self-evident.In this regard we have to accept that a) no Malaysian big business will sign up cryptocurrencies without a clear regulatory / risk framework and  b) crafting that regulatory framework is solely up to us and the authorities.