There’s many ways to judge if an operating system has made it to the big leagues, and one of the more unpleasant ones is the availability of malware. Haiku, the increasingly capable and daily-driveable successor to BeOS, is now officially a mainstream operating system, as it just had its first piece of malware.
HaikuRansomware is an experimental ransomware project designed for educational and investigative purposes. Inspired by the art of poetry and the challenge of cryptography, this malware encrypts files with a custom extension and provides a ransom note with a poetic touch. This is a proof of concept aimed to push the boundaries of how creative ransomware can be designed.
↫ HaikuRansomware’s GitHub page
Now this is obviously a bit of a tongue-in-cheek, experimental kind of thing, but it’s still something quite unique to happen to Haiku. I’m not entirely sure how the ransomware is supposed to spread, but my guess would be through social engineering. With Haiku being a relatively small project, and one wherein every user runs as root – baron, in BeOS parlance – I’m sure anything run through social engineering can do some serious damage without many guardrails in place. Don’t quote me on that, though, as Haiku may have more advanced guardrails and mitigations in place than classic BeOS did.
This proof-of-concept has no ill intent, and is more intended as an art project to highlight what you can do with encryption and ransomware on Haiku today, and I definitely like the art-focused approach of the author.