The institute where I did my B.Sc is under a ransomware attack, and I'm bracing myself for the publication of my embarrassing transcripts, and possibly the even more humiliating scans of my exams 🤣
Oh, well.

Yeah, i saw it in the news today.
The institute disconnected the network from the power supply and all tests are postponed. The hackers demand a 6 million dollars (or was it 9M?) as ransom with a 30% tax increase every 48 hours and in 5 days if the ransom is not payed they threat to sell the data in the dark web.

They say their motive is hacktivism against the jewish state 🤷‍♂️

Or...identity theft if they get your social.

Well, at least it's not identification/medical details that are being leaked...

...right?

That explains a lot.

@bioDan How does this hack help against the jewish state?

Maybe the hacker is jewish and said this in order to reduce suspicion for him in real life.

@bioDan So tests were only postponed by one day. Most systems are already up and running.

The email that was sent with the ransom request sounded more like a disgruntled employee than an actual activist.

@OmerFlame You know our IDs and addresses were already leaked a million times on previous embarrassing hacks of other databases....

BTW, the "Jewish state" is called Israel. I'm not sure what's the issue with calling it by its name? It's less characters to write.

@NickyBones afaik "Jewish state" was the language used in the email, its also likely that its a disgeuntle employee and also an activists. Those two attributes go together well 🤷‍♂️

@happygimp0 its a prestige institute in Israel, its highly unlikely a Jew would use that sort of language, but who knows

@bioDan They could be Jews covering their tracks, or it can be an Arab employee who has some strong feelings about the Israeli policies. Arabs are 30% of the students and they are also employed in various jobs in the institution, including IT.

But the statement of "they should pay for firing high skilled experts" was really weird in the context of political hacking.

@NickyBones I worked with a guy that was an Arab. He was condescending toward women, was incompetent at his job, and failed to come to work yet filled his time card like he was there. He got fired and of course sued the company. They had to get statements from employees in court. He always talked like he was the best engineer. So maybe this person considers themselves to be "high skilled expert" when in fact they are a hack. This might be payback for getting sacked.

I also worked with an Iranian that said "Arabs are dogs." It was an interesting work place. The Iranian was a nice guy and extremely competent.

@Demolishun I had a pretty good experience with the Arabs girls in my uni. They were very diligent, friendly and good conversationalists. They also put a lot of effort into their style, from clothes, to hair, makeup and nails and it was such a welcome sight in the sea of unkempt, out of shape, hopeless student zombies :)

@NickyBones I agree its weird, but it doesn't contradict either. Maybe activism wasn't the primary driver but sounds to me like a contributor or facilitator to the act.

Anyway, its all speculation at this point.

Do you miss your days dwelling in the green pastures of Haifa?

@bioDan I like Haifa as a city, but the Technion was an extremely traumatic experience.

@NickyBones I'm sorry to hear, how so?

@NickyBones I sometimes wonder why is Israel called the hi-tech capital or the startup capital of the world. We have great startups, yes...

...but have you seen our websites? (This is obviously rhetorical to you but not rhetorical for everyone who hasn't lived or learned in Israel...)

@bioDan Being treated as sub-human by the academic and administrative staff, mostly.

It felt like the whole program was designed to break your spirit rather than advance your skills. I had some good professors, but the majority were just varying degrees of evil.