Virus Hold Computer Files 'Hostage' for $200

dwayner79 sent in a story about a new virus making the rounds- this one is unique because it locks your files and then demands a $200 ransom to get them back. It seems to me that this might leave some sort of tracable money trail. They don't have much information on any particular transmission mechanism, they just talk about web pages giving it up.

Comments

a fix

[MankyD]

Assuming this virus is telling the truth (and I highly highly highly doubt it is), doesn't that mean that there's a simple command you can send to it to fix the problem? What's to prevent anti-virus companies from figuring this out and providing a quick fix?

Re:a fix

[pentalive]

A simple command to fix this? try
"restore backup"

Finally!

[Apreche]

What the hell took so long for this to happen? There are thousands of viruses all around and most of them are so benign. They just eat system resources, send spam, show ads and other bs. It took way too long for someone to make a virus that actually compromises data. I hope soon someone makes one that takes important data files and uploads them to a web server for public view. And another one that overwrites the hard drives 3 or 4 times to prevent data recovery.

Maybe when this happens people will actually pay more attention to computer security, instead of just putting up with the inconvenience.

Re:Finally!

[i.r.id10t]

You've not been around computers for long have you? We used to have all these nasty viruses, before Visual Basic and script kiddies, back when AOL wasn't on the Internet and dial up was mostly BBSes. Boot sector viruses, trashing hard drive controllers, etc.

Re:Finally!

[meringuoid]

Maybe when this happens people will actually pay more attention to computer security, instead of just putting up with the inconvenience.

What will do that is a virus that replaces all .jpg files found with goatse, tubgirl and lemonparty.

So many people have stored their digital camera photos on vulnerable Windows PCs. The only thing that will get them to secure those boxes is the threat that little Sophie's birthday photos, or the last time they went on holiday with Grandma before the illness, might be replaced with hideous porn by some virus...

Re:Finally!

[EnglishTim]

Yes, I'd never heard of lemonparty before either.

'course, I've got the sense not to look it up...

Re:Finally!

[mrchaotica]

Yeah, that's exactly why we don't see really destructive viruses anymore: they've evolved. Just like biological viruses, computer virus writers have learned that your virus will spread farther if it doesn't completely kill the host, or generate an overwhelming immune response.

interesting attack

[rayde]

this is interesting. if a virus did this on a large scale, there would be loads of people who would be desperate to recover their data, and likely no feasible way to do it on a large scale without key recovery. but really, does the h4xx0r expect to be able to collect a sizeable amount of money without it being traced?

yet another reason to do regular backups, so you are never solely dependent on your local copies.

Re:I call hoax

[saskboy]

I call RTFA ;-)

"The FBI said the scheme, which appears isolated, was unlike other Internet extortion crimes.

Leading security and anti-virus firms this week were updating protective software for companies and consumers to guard against this type of attack, which experts dubbed "ransom-ware"."

Getting away with it...

[NCraig]

"The problem is getting away with it - you've got to send the money somewhere," Stewart said. "If it involves some sort of monetary transaction, it's far easier to trace than an email account."

These guys won't get caught as long as they operate internationally and keep their ransom demands relatively low. As we've seen with the Nigerian Scam, there will be little impetus to apprehend these worthless criminals.

If a smart crook were behind this ...

[Y2]

If a smart crook were behind this, he'd not worry much about collecting the supposed ransom, but would pop his head up as a good guy saying he'd cracked the virus and would sell you a fix-it kit for $50.

Of course, this means any honest white knight is going to learn the hard way about 20 feds and a flashlight.

And computer criminals everywhere cringe

[grasshoppa]

Not that I particularly apprecaite idiot crackers making my work harder, but you gotta figure they'll be cringing at this rather blunt and clumsy attempt at extortion{sp}.

I mean, is it really that much harder to make a virus that silently installs itself and listens for key strokes, then sends those back to you through a few cracked proxies? And there you go: account numbers and passwords.

Idiots. If they do try to collect on this, they'll be caught, we'll find it's a couple of dumb as fuck kids who thought it'd be cool to "have a couple hundred bucks".

And while I'm on that, 200 bucks? If you are really trying to get money, why not charge 20 bucks? For 200 bucks, most people are likely to seek outside help. For 20 bucks, people are more likely to just fork it over. I'd bet you'd have a greater ROI with the lower charge.

Subtlely (?) destructive viruses

[mgkimsal2]

I've written about this before, but I'm *so* waiting for a virus to do one or more of the following:

* alter scheduled appointments in outlook/exchange
* alter contact information in outlook/exchange
* alter information in ms word and ms excel documents

The key to all this is to do it in small doses - change a 3 to a 4, alter appointments by 1 hour, etc, introduce a few wrong spellings into ms word documents, etc.

People have this view that viruses are horribly destructive, and it decreases the estimation of Windows in some. Others stick by Windows, content to use anti-virus stuff because a virus just generally uses up resources indiscriminately or 'steals' data.

If viruses started attacking the integrity of core MS Office products, not 'just' the operating system itself, more damage would be done to MS' hold on corporate america than any attack on the 'operating system' level by viruses.

Put more simply, most people really don't understand the ins and outs of operating systems, nor the potential damage than can be done to them. Everyone can understand the damage that could be done by having your spreadsheets altered without your knowledge.

Well, at least I *think* everyone could understand that.

Re:laundering the money

[team99parody]

In fact, Symantec does this to me (at work) all the time. I bought their product once; and every 6 months or however long it takes that license to expire; they keep spamming me with more emails that say if I want to keep my computer safe from all the stuff infectig it I need to pay them more protection money.

At home, I don't have the problem; since more honorable vendors that distribute their software via apt-get don't run these kinds of protection rackets.