The student opted for “free” software packed with a keylogger that grabbed credentials later used by “Totoro” to get into a biomolecular institute.

A European biomolecular research institute involved in COVID-19 research lost a week’s worth of research data, all thanks to a Ryuk ransomware attack traced back to a student trying to save money by buying unlicensed software.

Security researchers at Sophos described the attack in a report published on Thursday, after the security firm’s Rapid Response team was called in to mop up the mess.

Hey, everybody makes mistakes, the researchers said. That frugal student made a few of them. But the student’s goof-ups advanced to a full-fledged ransomware attack because there weren’t security measures in place to stop those missteps from happening, the researchers said.

That's what you get for using cracked software

I don't have a single cracked software/games in any of my PCs