Skip to main content

Ransom is the new Green

If you did not find a rock to hide under this past week you inevitably got bombarded by the news around a variety of snafus, hacks, intrusions, and modern day buccaneering.

It started with a popular streaming service called Netflix getting in the spotlight.  Netflix started as an online business model serving its subscribers with movies and shows for a monthly fee.  More recently Netflix expanded its scope to produce its own content.  More businesses in America now are expanding their envelope to become everything to everyone.  Look at Amazon - former bookstore and now for a large part of the American public their end-all be-all in terms of obtaining all manners of goods.

So Netflix decides to make its own shows and serials - a popular one called 'Orange is the New Black'.  Turns out some hacker in a former eastern block nation decides to hack into their servers and steal the newest episodes of this popular show.  Their threat - to release this to millions for free.  It is damaging to the brand and basically hits their bottom line but who you gonna catch?

Then days later some jackass at United Airlines - the same which was recently roasted for some unsavory videos -  put all Secure Airline Cockpit door lock codes online for anyone to see.  Hey everyone feel free to stop by the pilot's chambers and let him know if you liked his pretzels.  Fortunately no one was able to use that for another unsavory ransom.

And just recently we saw some Hackers steal the Pirates.  As in some trouble maker goon in cyberspace stole the latest installment of the Disney franchise - Pirates of the Caribbean.  They want to release it to online audiences and if Disney wants to stop it - they need to pay some green - pronto.

Of course the biggest news of the week came last night when the world woke up to news making them wanna cry.  The viral outbreak named WannaCry ironically was part of a code that the National Security Agency had built but fell into the wrong hands holding businesses and people's computer data as a condition to get the ransom.

Finally the jewel in the thorny crown might be apparently the Russian hacking into the recent Presidential elections and we might be watching the real life soap opera unravel over the days to come.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...
2 comments
Read more

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...
Post a Comment
Read more

Of Jims and Johns

Here is another essay on the subject of first names. As in birth names. Or names provided to an offspring at birth. While the developed world tends to shy away from the exotic like Refrigerator or Coca Cola for their new production there is a plethora of Jims and Johns and Bobs or Robs. Speaking of which I do not think there is a categoric decision point at the time of birth if a child will be hereafter called as Bob. I mean have not yet met a toddler called Bob or Rob for that matter. At some point though the parental instinct to mouth out multiple syllables runs out and they switch from calling the crawler Robert to simply Robbie to Rob. Now speaking of - it is strange that the name sounds like something you would not want Rob to do - i.e. Rob anyone. Then why call someone that? After all Rob Peter to Pay Paul is not exactly a maxim to live a young life? Is it? Perhaps Peter or Paul might want to have a say in it? Then there is this matter of going to the John. Why degrad...
2 comments
Read more