Comment by ChrisRR
5 years ago
Sounds like someone who's developed a prototype which they had grand plans of selling for billions, which then got easily hacked because they don't understand security
The $15k figure implies that's either a bill the hackers ran up on an AWS instance or what they valued their development at
Edit: The blackmail line sounds like a ransomware attack
I disagree. I think this person may not have necessarily programmed anything serious before in their life. Or if they have, probably not a defense project.
If you read the follow-up emails - and apologies for the armchair psychiatry - I think this person is very likely in a psychotic state. Their messages sound very similar to what you find in the "BadBIOS" and other "gangstalking" communities. It's not really tethered to reality.
I think it's extremely likely the author is not a troll and possesses a sincere and high-confidence belief that powerful entities are tracking and persecuting him and that backdoors in lots of software, including curl, were placed by sinister organizations and used to facilitate spying on and attacking him. The software is perceived as a WMD or pathogen partly responsible for this incursion into his life and the damage he thinks has resulted. He's mad because he thinks Daniel is like the mayor of Flint, MI: the water is poisoning people and he's doing absolutely nothing about it. Of course you'd be angry!
This is why it's generally best to not reply to messages as extreme as these. Daniel will never be able to convince him he isn't actually the metaphorical Flint mayor. You just get sucked into a world that's very real to them and not real to you or almost anyone else. It's not possible and not a good idea to try to reason with someone like that.