Man syskeys a scammer's computer!

[Aractus]

Right, so if you don't know how the tech-support scam works, well it works like this: A scammer will call you claiming to be from Microsoft Tech support, and will inform you that your computer is infested with a malignant cancerous tumour and intestinal worms. They will put you through the theatrics of netstat, event viewer, msconfig, and whatever other techniques they may have to convince you that toy computer is indeed infested. They may tell you that browsing porn is not safe and that is probably how you got infested (abusing a common stigma that exists about adult websites, it's actually far more likely to get infested from malicious advertising or from a malicious email link). They will then ask you to install Team Viewer, or Ammyy, or some other remote-control software and then get you to connect to their computer. Once they do that they will use syskey to encrypt your hard drive and set a password that will lock you out of your computer, and ransom access to it back to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du6acZ-PZQ8

This guy gets the Indian scammer to syskey his own computer, and then goes a step further by having him change the BIOS password as well. The scammer's computer is now completely unusable. He has performed a public service by preventing the Indian from scamming people, at least until he clears the BIOS password and reinstalls Windows (so for the rest of the day anyway).

What I find troubling are the comments in the Youtube video saying "this is the guy's livelihood" and "it is not OK to get him fired from his job" - um, WHAT? Since when do employees in a criminal enterprise have any legitimate rights to job security? Do people actually think this way??

[Losty]

How is the Indian part relevant? Just...I don't get why he's the Indian scammer instead of just the scammer. Anyways it's cool the guy scammed back the scammer.

[Ben Davis]

Ahh, the perils of ransomware. The 'honeypot' solution is becoming more common in business: procsses which identify suspicious behaviour/code and redirect to a system location that gives the ware the illusion of access but actually delivers malignant code to scupper their tech. First time I've seen a non-corporate user do the same though. Nice!

To your question, of course some people will side with the scammer and cries of "he's just trying to make a living in this big, bad, capitalist world!" are a common way of hiding personal accountability. Typically, such people are associated or identify with such behaviour, for example someone who wouldn't be opposed to taking a shady 'job' if they were forced to in order to provide for their family.

It does raise an interesting point because most modern methods of resource-distribution create criminal activity as a by-product, simply because there either isn't enough to go around or access is controlled. We won't stop that until we can fix all forms of resource deficit.

[Aoi Magi]

This is great, I can't decide if this was staged or there really are this kind of moron scammers out there, but it was seriously hilarious.

[popeyespappy]

Karen got a call from one of these guys a couple of weeks ago. She strung him along for nearly 30 minutes. She pretended she was doing what he told her to do, and had him repeat instructions over and over until she finally got bored with it. Finally she told him she used her phone for everything, didn't even have a PC and was just fucking with him. Dude was pissed and got even madder when she laughed at him. C'est la vie mother fucker.

[rexbeccarox]

I work for a PC repair shop in god's waiting room. You wouldn't believe the amount of senior citizens who fall for these scammers, among other things- like the Wow computer. It's nice to hear about at least one asshole getting it back.

[Alex K]

Karen got a call from one of these guys a couple of weeks ago. She strung him along for nearly 30 minutes. She pretended she was doing what he told her to do, and had him repeat instructions over and over until she finally got bored with it. Finally she told him she used her phone for everything, didn't even have a PC and was just fucking with him. Dude was pissed and got even madder when she laughed at him. C'est la vie mother fucker.

They tried that on my parents recently. "Hello, we're from microsoft and we detected a dangerous security problem you need to fix immediately. Can you go to the System control?" "No, don't see it" "No? Ok, which Windows version does it say?" "Gnome" - click -

hehe, I knew it pays off to still migrate your 70yo folks to Linux.

[Sterben]

Wow, he owned him! He should keep up the good work. Asking a customer to into their BIOS is something Microsoft can not do legally, only the computers manufacturer is licensed for something like that,

[Aractus]

Wow, he owned him! He should keep up the good work. Asking a customer to into their BIOS is something Microsoft can not do legally, only the computers manufacturer is licensed for something like that,

That's not true, if they were providing tech support (which costs a fortune with MS anyway) they would of course talk you through any bios settings that might need to be changed, such as boot order. Or they could use it to diagnose what the problem is (e.g. does BIOS register the HDD).

[Thumpalumpacus]

Ask them for a callback number, and tell them you'll deal with it then. Problem solved.