A Calgary Police spokesman has revealed that a number of schools within Calgary, CA have come under threat of being asploded by bombs unless a Bitcoin ransom is promptly paid to a known but yet disclosed by police address. Continue reading
Category Archives: Ransomware
Kidnappers Demand Ransom Be Paid With Bitcoin
Costa Rican tabloid Diario Extra reports the kidnapping of Canadian man Piercy Bate Ryan Craig. Craig, who is featured as a Costa Rican importer on the website ImportGenius, is being ransomed for a total of US $500,000 payable in bitcoin.
While it's not evident that the kidnappers are regular readers of the #bitcoin-assets logs, it's clear that this attempt to extort bitcoin in exchange for the release of a prisoner won't be the last and is something sure to grow as would be kidnappers realise the superiority of bitcoin over fiat when demanding ransoms.
Sony Cancels Movie Under Duress
After a deluge of leaks and a single anonymous threat in the wake of Sony's hacking by a group calling itself the Guardians of Peace, numerous Theater Chains and Sony Pictures have canceled the release of the comedy film The Interview. There are reports that tomorrow Federal Investigators in the United States will hold a press conference where they will present allegations which point to North Korea as a State actor having been behind the hacking, leaking, and threats aimed at Sony Pictures entertainment. An analysis of some of the malware implicated in the attack suggests a substantially lower level of sophistication and talent went into this effort than is usually associated with state level actors.
A scene from the canceled movie in which what appears to be a tank shell strikes Kim Jung Un's helicopter, immolates him, and causes his head to explode is available on Youtube at present and has been embedded below: Continue reading
Too Many People Pay Ransomware Demands
A recent report by ESET security suggests that the TorrentLocker ransomware enjoys a 1.44% rate of success in converting victims into ransom payments. This discouraging figure suggest that there are still far too many people subsidizing this phenomenon. As noted in the guide to protecting yourself from ransomware, paying ransoms only encourages the continuation of this activity. Don't be like the Sheriff's department that admits it paid to subsidize criminal activity.
OphionLocker, Latest Ransomware Which Is Spread Via Ad Networks
F-Secure reports that a new piece of ransomware named OphionLocker is being distributed via ad networks. First spotted by Trojan7Malware, OphionLocker encrypts a user's files before demanding a ransom of 1 BTC and directing them to smu743glzfrxsqcl.onion via tor2web.org for further instructions.
Once infected, OphionLocker prompts users with a warning which states: Continue reading
The Antidote to Ransomware: Prevention
The threat of ransomware as the dominant means by much malware peddlers can extract a quick profit has slowly been growing ever since Bitcoin surpassed the per ounce price of silver in early 2013. Seeing as ransomware has become such a main stream phenomenon that it has reached a New York Post advice column it's high time Qntra has offered some advice on avoiding the pains that ransomware can inflict. Here's a few measures you can take: Continue reading
VirRansom, The Latest Ransomware
Naked Security has news of a new piece of ransomware which is unlike more recent ones in that it is not simply a variant of CryptoLocker. Sophos have named the virus VirRansom and it differs to CryptoLocker in that it infects other files instead of just encrypting them in order to hold a user at ransom. Continue reading
Sony Pictures Suffers Targeted Cyber Attack
The Los Angeles Times reports that a group calling itself #GOP or "Guardians of Peace" has compromised the ability of movie studio Sony Pictures to derive any utility from their information technology infrastructure. Allegedly the group behind the event has not made any concrete demands, but is threatening to leak internal information from the studio to the web if certain demands are not met. This event deviates from typical, far less selective, ransomware attacks which happen to affect single computers opportunistically and then demand a set monetary ransom to facilitate the recovery of files. Self Proclaimed "hack victim" Mark Karpeles have offered that the Sony hackers might be Chinese or Korean based on a text encoding error.
CoinVault: Decrypt One File For Free, Send Bitcoin To Decrypt The Rest
From Webroot comes a report of a new piece of ransomware called CoinVault. CoinVault works much in the same way as previous iterations of ransomware such as CryptoLocker by encrypting the user's files and then demanding that the user pay a ransom with bitcoin if they wish to reclaim the files. Where CoinVault differs to other ransomware is that it offers the user the choice to decrypt one file for free. The CoinVault ransom states: Continue reading
Detroit Hit By Ransomware in April
According to The Detroit News and the Associated Press a city database was hit by ransomware this past April. According to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan a ransom of 2,000 BTC was requested in order to restore access to the affected database. He also reported the ransom was not paid as the database was apparently not that important. This was revealed at the North American International Cyber Summit at Cobo Center. At the summit the Mayor also presented something else as problematic. Continue reading