ransomware
- 1Malicious software that locks up a computer user's data and demands payment to restore access.
Like a kidnapper holding your belongings hostage and demanding a ransom before returning them.
The attack used ransomware to encrypt the firm's files and demand a large payment.
Security teams warned that ransomware was targeting hospitals across the region.
Note
Formed from ransom plus -ware, the suffix of software and malware. In news prose it most often works as a modifier: a ransomware attack, ransomware schemes, as in Mark Sweney's 2020 report on Garmin's encrypted network. As a mass noun it takes no plural, so write a ransomware attack rather than a ransomware. The payment demand is not always honest, and paying may restore nothing.
- 2Software whose makers will open up its source code only once they have been paid for it.
Like a museum that says its collection will be free to all, but only once it has collected enough in paid tickets.
The community accused the studio of shipping ransomware when it gated its source behind a paywall.
He called the release ransomware because the promised open license never appeared without payment.
Note
A jibe rather than a neutral label, it is a word for someone else's release. The insult borrows its picture from the malicious-software meaning: something useful held back until a price is paid. Neutral prose describes the same arrangement differently, as source code held in escrow and released under an open license once fundraising conditions are met, as in Mano Paul's Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CSSLP CBK (2013).
Practice
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Origin
Formed from "ransom" combined with the suffix "-ware", as found in "software".