Ransomware is a term many more people came to recognize over the past couple of years as hackers realized how lucrative it could be. When a machine is infected with ransomware, the entire system is locked down with encryption and a payment is demanded to regain access. Businesses are mainly targeted, but even public libraries and hospitals have suffered because of it. Now a joke ransomware has left its creator red-faced.
An undergraduate student in Korea who remains nameless decided to create ransomware called Rensenware as a joke. The name is a pun on a Japanese bullet hell shooter video game released in 2009 called Touhou Seirensen (translated it means Undefined Fantastic Object). You can see the game in action in the video below, which should also help you understand why these games are referred to using the term "bullet hell."
Unlike most ransomware that demand money, Rensenware demands you play the game it includes and score "over 0.2 billion in LUNATIC level." Anyone who enjoys bullet hell shooters would gladly take up the challenge, but there's one problem: the game is impossibly hard.
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Rensenware's creator told Kotaku he created the malware because he was bored. When finished, he uploaded it to GitHub and then fell asleep. On waking up he realized the joke ransomware had spread and people were getting infected. He also managed to accidentally infect himself and found it impossible to score the required 200,000 to unlock his own machine.
He has since apologized and released a second piece of software that neutralizes Rensenware on any infected machines. Although annoying for anyone who was infected, it's more embarrassing for the creator. However, because he openly released the project this may not be the last we see of it. Rensenware could return in a much more malicious form.
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