What would you rather have: $125,000 worth of crypto or crusty French bread? It appears that one ransomware group is a bigger fan of the latter, having demanded that payment for the 40GB of compressed data it stole be paid in baguettes.
Hellcat, a newly formed ransomware group, claims it is behind the cybersecurity incident being investigated by Schneider Electric. The French multinational energy management company has confirmed a developer platform was breached.
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Hellcat is asking for $125,000 to delete the data. It said that if Schneider publicly admits to the breach, it would cut the ransom demand in half to $62,500.
However, rather than demanding the money in crypto, as is the norm, Hellcat is asking for it to be paid in baguettes.
With the average price of a standard baguette in France at €1.07, or approximately $1.09, Schneider would need to hand over at least 58,715 of these long French loaves.
All hostage negotiations require a certain amount of trust to proceed.
I don’t really follow any hackers, but I know that different groups have different ethics, and some of them actually have a reputation to uphold.
And speaking of reputation, currently I have more faith in a random group of hackers than I do in a fortune 500 company not to renege on their end of the deal.
The request for bread is unusual. But it’s France, so maybe not that unusual. Depending on the ‘payment plan’ you could feed a thousand people a week for a year.
It’s a bit of a stretch (their statement is so short), but I interpret this as: “Schneider has failed to serve the public trust by allowing the public’s data to be exposed. They can regain the public’s trust by feeding the public.”
That’s my interpretation. Plus a little “hon hon, baguettes pay in pain flute”
Also, in the grander scheme, it’s not that much. If schneider are smart, they’ll say something like “how about if we donate $75k to local human feeding charities?”