City of London Police Sends Out Alert for Bitcoin Ransom
A City of London cybercrime unit – the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) - has issued a warning for TorrentLocker ransomware disguised to look as if it's sent from UK institutions and corporations such as the Ministry of Justice, Home Office, and British Gas. TorrentLocker is malicious software that holds a computer for “ransom” until a certain amount of bitcoin is paid. TorrentLocker is a clone of CryptoLocker, and as such works in a similar manner. Unsuspecting targets of TorrentLocker are usually sent an e-mail, and tricked into opening and installing an attachment. Once they....
Related News
A suburban Chicago Police Department recently paid a $500 worth Bitcoin ransom to retrieve their malware-hit data from an unidentified hacker. Somewhere in January, Midlothian police reported to have been attacked by cryptoware - a trojan that encrypts data of the target's computer and seeks ransom for its retrieval from online criminals. Reportedly, the hacker in this case had encrypted specific confidential files on the police's computer, though he never got to access them. According to Calvin Harder Jr., a local IT expert at Midlothian, someone from the police department accidentally....
A 32-year-old Brazilian woman was recently rescued by the Civil Police on the east side of São Paulo, Brazil. The woman, married to a bitcoin businessman, was kidnapped in Florianopolis on Wednesday. The ransom was demanded in bitcoin and another unnamed cryptocurrency, according to local publication Diário Catarinense. The kidnappers approached the victim right after she dropped her daughter off at school, 50 meters away from where she lives. While on their way to the city, they kidnappers contacted the victim’s husband demanding the ransom, sending him a video of victim in which she said....
A senior executive in Australia has reportedly been victimized after the company they work for was pressured by online hackers into paying a ransom in bitcoin worth $14,000 earlier this year. According to a report by the Brisbane Times, the unnamed Queensland-based business suffered an internal data theft, which was followed by the ransom demand. The company paid the amount, local law enforcement officials told the news service. Subsequent ransom demands were ignored, police explained, a decision that is said to have prompted the hackers to escalate their intimidatory tactics. The hackers....
Tewksbury Police Department has reportedly paid a $500 Bitcoin ransom to hackers who had infected the department's files with a ransomware program called CryptoLocker. The malware program bogged down the police systems for 5 days after which the department finally decided to pay up. Chief of Police Timothy Sheehan said, "Nobody wants to negotiate with terrorists. Nobody wants to pay terrorists. We did everything we possibly could." Timothy went on to add that, "It was an eye-opening experience, I can tell you right now. It made you feel that you lost control of everything. Paying the....
Computer hackers have been attacking government offices and private industry for decades in the pursuit of extorting millions of U. S. Dollars. Now, the digital crime is gaining a new digital treasure for the a more advanced 21st century criminal underworld. Cryptoware Attack Nets Over 2 Bitcoins. South of Chicago, Illinois, the small Midlothian police department was subject to a criminal Cryptoware attack by an unknown hacker. The perpetrator disabled a police computer, rendering it inaccessible through his encryption program labeled Cryptoware. As far as police know, the computer's....