back to article LockBit: Sorry about the SickKids ransomware, not sorry about the rest

Notorious ransomware gang LockBit "formally apologized" for an extortion attack against Canada's largest children's hospital that the criminals blamed on a now-blocked affiliate group, and said it published a free decryptor for the victim to recover the files. "The partner who attacked this hospital violated our rules, is …

  1. sgp

    What kind of a sick kid calls a children's hospital SickKids?

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge

      "Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children"

      Soooo.... is there a Toronto's Hospital for Well Children? How big is it? Why wasn't it just plain Toronto Children's Hospital like a sane person would name it?

    2. John Riddoch

      Here in Edinburgh UK, the Childrens' hospital is basically just known as "Sick Kids", e.g. "had to take the youngest to sick kids on fathers' day because they broke their arm" (true story...). Officially it's known as "Royal Hospital for Children & Young People" but I've never heard anyone call it that.

      1. Dante Alighieri
        Headmaster

        worked in..

        sick chicks brisbane {australia for the west pondians} sweat shirt with the same...

        sick chicks/kids edinburgh [uk ditto]

        YMMV

  2. Potemkine! Silver badge

    LockBit and al.

    I would have no problem to see these bastards experiencing tarring and feathering.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: see these bastards experiencing tarring and ...

      Tarring is fine, but I think maybe you also should also gzip them, so as to save on feathers.

      1. GraXXoR

        Re: see these bastards experiencing tarring and ...

        ... and ironically encrypt on compression with a random 256 character string.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yeah, yeah, just keep using Windows

    It appears only Stephen Vaughan-Nichols is brave enough to point out the obvious..

    1. xyz123 Silver badge

      Re: Yeah, yeah, just keep using Windows

      Thats the same guy that was paid by billionaires to push anti-crypto "it's all evil made by satanists/communists/Putin/right-wing/left-wing" FUD into Reddit, Facebook, twitter etc.

    2. IGotOut Silver badge

      Re: Yeah, yeah, just keep using Windows

      The thing is, he can preach and lecture all he fucking wants, the rest of us live in the real world. Where Linux simply doesn't support 99% of the real world desktop applications.

    3. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: Yeah, yeah, just keep using Windows

      What, that Linux doesn't get malware? Someone needs to call up the 1990s and see if we can send the slogan back to Apple, since they have had to acknowledge that Macs do get malware. Linux does too. You can install ransomware on any system that you've broken into. All you need is the ability to read files and write them.

      If everybody switched to Linux tomorrow, the most active groups would go to the dark web marketplaces, search for "Linux ransomware", find several results, and start using it. The less active that didn't already have their Linux version would start switching their codebases and come for the Linux users in a month. Please stop with the false statements about Linux's perfection; you make those of us who like Linux and understand what it is annoyed.

      1. Dante Alighieri
        Holmes

        Re: Yeah, yeah, just keep using Windows

        Thankfully I use RISC OS

        Security through obscurity and pineapples :)

        OS in ROM? how does that help...

  4. xyz123 Silver badge

    That "fix" lockbit is giving away will contain firmware-level exploits/malware the hospital will have to trash entire racks of server motherboards to fix.

    Lockbit are absolute evil and are a direct enemy to every single government and country on earth. They undertake military raids and attacks for the russian government and are effectively at war with Ukraine and the West, and thus are legitimate military targets.

    1. Kefik

      Not seeing the blatant contradiction there?

      Another good example of the damage psyopcracy can inflict on the brain.

      https://consortiumnews.com/2022/12/27/fighting-the-psyopcracy/

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Excuses

    "Hey, we only ruined your parent's lives kids, so forgive us for attacking your health care provider."

    I look forward to the day all theese scum are outed.

  6. Bitsminer Silver badge

    more about self-preservation?

    Canada has, after some years of anguish, authorized "disruption" of cyber-threat actors by the relevant agency.

    See their mandate.

    Although after attacks in France I expect DGSE has few compunctions about similar kinds of responses, whether authorized in law or not.

    Whether the Lockbit gang pays attention to this is another question.

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