Out of curiosity, what about this attacks feels futuristic? If anything it feels very retro, in that it hails back to the notorious worm attacks from the earliest days of networked computing.

the headline more than anything -- pilfered secret spy software stolen by (probably) a rival intelligence agency, released to the public without scrutiny, repurposed by cybercriminals, used to ransom data indiscriminately for decentralized software currency, bringing major institutions to their knees, and defeated by a guy in his bedroom at his parents' house who accidentally found a secret kill switch. it all feels very cyberpunk, and very much like a fictional plot, unfortunate circumstances aside

aha, and i see i'm not the only one who thinks so: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/05/rejectio...

though a bit of it is in your camp as well:

> It's a worm — a boringly old-hat idea first introduced into fiction by SF author John Brunner in his 1977 novel "The Shockwave Rider".