But that night, his laptop fans whirred at full speed while the computer was asleep. The next morning, his files were encrypted. A ransom note appeared on his desktop — in broken French — demanding 300 euros in Bitcoin. His thesis draft, his survey data, even his baby photos: all locked.

The search results bloomed like weeds. “Full version — no serial key required.” “Tested and working.” “Download password: 1234.” The comments section was a graveyard of broken promises: “doesn’t work on Windows 10.” “Trojan detected.” “Thanks mate, you saved my thesis!”

Léo hesitated for exactly eight seconds. Then he clicked.