{"id":22413,"date":"2026-03-23T07:37:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T06:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/23\/we-know-you-can-pay-a-million-by-anja-shortland-review-the-terrifying-new-world-of-ransomware\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T07:37:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T06:37:16","slug":"we-know-you-can-pay-a-million-by-anja-shortland-review-the-terrifying-new-world-of-ransomware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/23\/we-know-you-can-pay-a-million-by-anja-shortland-review-the-terrifying-new-world-of-ransomware\/","title":{"rendered":"We Know You Can Pay a Million by Anja Shortland review \u2013 the terrifying new world of ransomware"},"content":{"rendered":"

Criminals extorting money online have created huge businesses, complete with branding and HR<\/p>\n

The birth of ransomware was a stunt that got out of hand. In 1989, an evolutionary biologist called Joseph L Popp Jr was working part time for the World Health Organisation on the Aids epidemic. He was a difficult man. When he was denied a permanent job, he decided to punish his peers while shocking them into acknowledging another kind of infection: the computer virus.<\/p>\n

Popp wrote a questionnaire promising to help minimise the risk of contracting HIV, duplicated it on to 20,000 floppy discs, and sent them to researchers in 90 countries. Each disc contained a Trojan virus. Once it was inserted, a malware timebomb eventually made the computer unusable until the user paid a \u201clicence fee\u201d of $189 to a PO box in Panama. Popp\u2019s primitive \u201cAids Trojan\u201d was quickly identified and he was arrested for blackmail. Intending to make a point rather than a profit, he was mortified to learn that some of his targets had overreacted by wiping their hard drives: one Italian Aids organisation lost a decade\u2019s worth of vital data. Popp experienced a psychological collapse and was deemed unfit to stand trial. The criminals who developed his crude innovation into a global business would not be so scrupulous.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nCriminals extorting money online have created huge businesses, complete with branding and HR
\nThe birth of ransomware was a stunt that got out of hand. In 1989, an evolutionary biologist called Joseph L Popp Jr was working part time for the World Health Organisation on the Aids epidemic. He was a difficult man. When he was denied a permanent job, he decided to punish his peers while shocking them into acknowledging another kind of infection: the computer virus.
\nPopp wrote a questionnaire promising to help minimise the risk of contracting HIV, duplicated it on to 20,000 floppy discs, and sent them to researchers in 90 countries. Each disc contained a Trojan virus. Once it was inserted, a malware timebomb eventually made the computer unusable until the user paid a \u201clicence fee\u201d of $189 to a PO box in Panama. Popp\u2019s primitive \u201cAids Trojan\u201d was quickly identified and he was arrested for blackmail. Intending to make a point rather than a profit, he was mortified to learn that some of his targets had overreacted by wiping their hard drives: one Italian Aids organisation lost a decade\u2019s worth of vital data. Popp experienced a psychological collapse and was deemed unfit to stand trial. The criminals who developed his crude innovation into a global business would not be so scrupulous. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Criminals extorting money online have created huge businesses, complete with branding and HR The birth of ransomware was a stunt that got out of hand. In 1989, an evolutionary biologist called Joseph L Popp Jr was working part time for the World Health Organisation on the Aids epidemic. He was a difficult man. When he …<\/p>\n

We Know You Can Pay a Million by Anja Shortland review \u2013 the terrifying new world of ransomware<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":22414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22413"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}