Bitcoin Ransomware Hits Sheriff's Office
Dickson County Sheriff's Office said they had to pay a ransom - $500 in Bitcoin - to regain access to thousands of their case files which has been encrypted by a computer virus, News Channel 5 Network reports. IT Director Detective Jeff McCliss said: "Every sort of document that you could develop in an investigation was in that folder. There was a total of 72,000 files." The computer virus, Cryptowall, is a variant of the infamous CryptoLocker. In August, PC World reported that CryptoWall infected over 600,000 computer systems in the past six months and held 5 billion files hostage,....
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A county sheriff's office in Tennessee paid a $500 ransom in bitcoin after it became the victim of a cyberattack this week. As reported by Nashville-based WTVF-TV, the Dickson County Sheriff's Office ran afoul of a bug known as Cryptowall, a derivative of infamous ransomware CryptoLocker. Cryptowall is a Trojan horse program that, once inside a computer, encrypts its contents and triggers demands for a payment in bitcoin. The firm's estimates suggest that after being discovered earlier this year, as many as 1,000 computers have been infected. Detective and sheriff's office IT director Jeff....
Sometimes it feels like the only way Bitcoin makes headlines is either through a price change or ransomware. Cerber, one of the most dangerous types of Bitcoin ransomware alive today, has been cloned into a new variant. As a result, this undisclosed type of malware can target Office 365 users through a zero-day attack. It is very well possible millions of business users have been affected already. When malware starts to show traits of chameleon-like behavior, things are getting more worrisome than ever before. Security researchers have discovered a new form of the Cerber ransomware family,....
The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that the the total losses generated by the bitcoin ransomware called Cryptowall have reached $18 million. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center stated that the agency received 992 complaints related to Cryptowall between April 2014 and June 2015. Bitcoin has typically been used by hackers as their means of demanding ransom from companies they've attacked with their malware. In Brisbane, a company has reportedly paid this bitcoin ransom but the hackers refused to back down with their demands. Bitcoin Ransomware Attacks. Typically these....
Following the news that Backpage had launched a lawsuit against Chicago-area Sheriff Thomas Dart, the company has made more headway, winning a "restraining order" against the outspoken sheriff. He will no longer be able to make "de-funding" efforts against Backpage.com. Lawyers for Backpage.com are pushing to have the Sheriff rescind his letters to MasterCard and Visa, which would amount to an apology. There is no way for Backpage.com to force the credit card processing companies to start working with them again, but if the companies knew that the Sheriff's threats of legal action were....
The increase in ransomware attacks on banks has forced them to buy bitcoin. Who would have imagined that traditional banks would be buying Bitcoin so soon? The answer is – probably no one. The recent increase in Bitcoin ransomware attacks on banks and financial institutions has forced them to take this extreme step. According to the CEO of Malwarebytes – Marcin Kleczynski, the malicious ransomware programs have created a huge security threat to banks. In order to ensure uninterrupted service, the banking industry is even prepared to pay the price demanded by cyber criminals to recover data....