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Some may have heard of scambaiting spammers to waste their time and resources. There are many sites like 419eater which concentrate on it. However, Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story which takes things a step further. A French security researcher says he managed to turn the tables on a cyber-scammer by sending him malware. Whether or not that is ethical is left as an exercise for the readership.

But Ivan Kwiatkowski played along with the scheme until he was asked to send credit card details. He instead sent an attachment containing ransomware.

[...] When Mr Kwiatkowski's parents stumbled across one such website, he decided to telephone the company and pretend he had been fooled.

The "assistant" on the telephone tried to bamboozle him with technical jargon and encouraged him to buy a "tech protection subscription" costing 300 euros (£260).

Mr Kwiatkowski told the assistant that he could not see his credit card details clearly and offered to send a photograph of the information.

But he instead sent a copy of Locky ransomware disguised as a compressed photograph, which the assistant said he had opened.

"He says nothing for a short while, and then... 'I tried opening your photo, nothing happens.' I do my best not to burst out laughing," Mr Kwiatkowski wrote in his blog.

[...] Mr Kwiatkowski said he could not be absolutely certain whether the ransomware had infected the scammer's computer, but there was a fair chance it had.

"He did not let on that something had happened to his computer, so my attempt is best represented as an unconfirmed kill," said Mr Kwiatkowski.

"But encrypting a whole file system does take some time."

He acknowledged that some people may have found his retaliation unethical, but said responses had been "mostly positive".

Original Submission