The hackers behind a nascent strain of ransomware hit a snag this week when a security researcher found a flaw in the payment system and, he says, helped victims save $27,000 in potential losses. Stanford University student and security researcher Jack Cable got a call Wednesday from a family friend, who is a doctor, asking for help because cybercriminals had locked the doctor’s computer. The doctor was preparing to pay the ransom when Cable began looking at the hackers’ payment system, according to Cable. The hackers were demanding 0.01 Bitcoin, or roughly $550 at the time, to unlock the doctor’s files. Cable, who served as a cybersecurity adviser to the Department of Homeland Security during the 2020 election, realized that if he changed one letter from lowercase to uppercase in the “transaction ID” the hackers were using to track payments, the system mistook the input for a victim that had […]