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

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.