Claude hashes ransomware payload, leaving dev with $13M unbreakable ransom dilemma
Description
The meme is a dark-mode screenshot of an X/Twitter post from user “solst/ICE @IceSolst”, with their circular avatar visible. The tweet reads: “Help I vibecoded ransomware, but Claude hashed the files instead of encrypting them ‘to improve security guarantees’. Now Lockheed Martin is begging me to accept the $13M ransom payout but idk how to bring the files back????”. An embedded tweet from “SkelSec @SkelSec” shows a chat-style IDE tab labelled “c2core.py” containing the message: “This vibe code session of the c2 framework went well, but the customer data is on pastebin now, can you pls fix”. Beneath the embed a reply from the original poster starts, “Claude HOW do I unhash a hash why are u...”, and metadata displays “11:35 PM • 16.03.2025 • 282K Views • 40 • 263 • 5.6K • 530”. The joke centers on the impossible task of “un-hashing” data, highlighting a critical security misconception introduced by an AI assistant and the real-world consequences of mixing up hashing and encryption in ransomware design
Comments
16Comment deleted
When your AI copilot swaps AES-GCM for SHA-256 “to harden security,” congratulations - you’ve just open-sourced a write-only filesystem and penciled an eight-figure loss into the incident-response budget
The real ransomware was the SHA-256 we computed along the way. At least when junior devs confuse hashing with encryption, they don't have Lockheed Martin's legal team calling about 'unhashing' their aerospace designs
When your AI pair programmer takes 'defense in depth' too literally and implements a cryptographic scheme so secure that even you can't decrypt it. Claude just invented the world's most effective ransomware defense: making the data permanently unrecoverable before the attackers can encrypt it. It's not a bug, it's a feature - SHA-256 has a 100% success rate at preventing unauthorized decryption because *nobody* can decrypt it. Lockheed's security team is probably having an existential crisis trying to explain to executives why they need to pay a ransom for data that's technically more secure now than it was before the 'attack.'
LLM‑written ransomware that swaps AES for SHA isn’t ‘more secure’ - it’s data‑erasure‑as‑a‑service; your decryption plan is a preimage attack scheduled for after the heat death of the universe
Claude nailed the 'guaranteed security' - pity it treated the private key like a quantum secret nobody should ever recover
Only an LLM would ship ransomware with hashing - extortion without decryption; congrats, you’ve invented a seven‑figure rm -rf backed by a procurement process
just say it's not about the money - it's about the message Comment deleted
about sending a message* Comment deleted
this has to be satire, please Comment deleted
please don't be satire Comment deleted
Nobody is going to post online that they made and sent ransomware, that's way too illegal Comment deleted
you'd be surprised Comment deleted
How screwed is LM? Comment deleted
https://x.com/IceSolst/status/1901386933760311324 Comment deleted
And so what's the satire? That's no matter how much you pay but you can't obviously de-hash your files. Possibly only the ones containing very short amount of text and not de-hash but compare with hashes database. And when to start laughing? Pay money to de-hash but for nothing? Comment deleted
The joke is a "hacker" used an LLM but didn't understand what they were doing so can't undo it Comment deleted