Cyber crooks know now not to bother trying to mess with UK rock band Radiohead after the band opted to release 18 hours of music instead of paying a blackmail ransom after the music was stolen.
18 hours of music that was recorded during the making of Radiohead’s 1997 OK Computer album was stolen by hackers who demanded $150,000 for it. Failure to pay and the crooks would leak the music online.
It doesn’t appearing paying up was on the agenda for Radiohead, though. In a statement, the band announced that they themselves would release all 18 hours of the music, charging a mere £18 for it, with all proceeds going to pro-environmental group Extinction Rebellion (perhaps most famous recently for their protests in London.)
“For £18 you can find out if we should have paid that ransom” said guitarist Jonny Greenwood in a Facebook post.
Details of how the music was stolen are not known. In the Facebook post, the band vaguely attributed the theft to someone “stealing” Thom Yorke’s minidisk archive, presumably a digital stash of the music. As such, crooks must have somehow gained access to Yorke’s account where the music was stored.
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Short of breaking past the security defences of the website where the music was stored, it is possible the crooks may have launched a phishing attack against the band to trick them into revealing the login information.
Either way, the bands refusal to pay-up is something that security experts recommend. Even taking into account there is no guarantee the crooks will honour their side of the bargain, paying a ransom only increases the motivation for crooks to continue with these sorts of crimes in the future.
We can only hope the cyber crooks spent a considerable amount of time trying to gain illicit access to the music, only for their hopes of a payday being quickly dashed by Radiohead’s refusal to pay up.