The group that this week leaked NSA-linked cyberweapons online hasn’t managed to rake in the Bitcoin fortune they demanded for additional leaks, but they did get paid in another internet-based currency: trolling.
A mysterious entity calling itself the Shadow Brokers published multiple exploits that they claim were stolen from the Equation Group, a powerful hacking team linked the to the National Security Agency. The group is offering more exploits via a Bitcoin auction, and they are demanding a payment of 1 million bitcoin, or about $5.7 million.
So far, the Shadow Brokers have only received a fraction of a bitcoin (0.08066178 BTC, to be exact) at the time of this writing—that’s equal to roughly $46. What they received instead, Motherboard reports, is a good ol’ fashioned Rickroll.
Through the clever use of Bitcoin addresses, a prankster spelled out the key lyrics to Rick Astley’s timeless classic “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
1never9kNNkr27UseZSHnaEHg1z8v3Mbb
1gonnaV3MFNjymS4RGvUbHACstiS8aSYz
1giveGEk184Gwep2KT4UBPTcE9oqWzCVR
1youKBMLEohsexdZtkvnTzHnc4iU7Ffty
1upAbpBEWQ467QNT7i4vBMVPzSfQ3sqoQ
1never9kNNkr27UseZSHnaEHg1z8v3Mbb
1gonnaV3MFNjymS4RGvUbHACstiS8aSYz
11etAyypstpXLQpTgoYmYzT8M2foBSBe1
1youKBMLEohsexdZtkvnTzHnc4iU7Ffty
1downAsBbRQcBfUj8rgQomqhRsNFf1jMo
Adding to the old school internet joke, the prankster made each transaction worth 0.001337 BTC, in homage to leet, the now-cliche code of spelling things out using numbers in place of letters.
While this may be a joke, experts are taking the leak itself extremely seriously. The NSA and the FBI are likely to investigate the hack, which has left at least one multibillion dollar firm and its clients vulnerable to attack.
H/T Motherboard