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Many Australians Forced To Pay For "Unbreakable" Cryptolocker Ransomware

Posted by timothy on from the long-walk-short-plank dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Australians are paying thousands of dollars to overseas hackers to rid their computers of an unbreakable virus [Cryptolocker]. The deputy chairwoman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Delia Rickard, said over the past two months there had been a spike in the number of people falling victim to the scam. The commission has received 2,500 complaints this year and estimates about $400,000 has been paid to the hackers. Bad news for Australians: this is just one of many targetting the country.

2 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Every customer of mine by dwywit · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oh, bloody hell.

    Cryptoprevent from FoolishIT

    --
    They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
  2. Re:Every customer of mine by dbIII · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm sort of curious how this ransomware is being executed by clicking on a single link in an e-mail

    How?
    "Outlook not so good."
    Actually it's the combination of MS Outlook and IE that have such a "feature" for convenience. All it takes is for IE to be directed to the site and it helpfully runs the malware - no questions asked.

    Some of the emails have been from the tax office (equivalent to IRS), some have been about package deliveries with a tracking link and others have been about speeding fines. They are aimed squarely to catch people who are not idiots, just not as paranoid about computers as is required these days.

    There have been a few articles about it over the last year apart from the article linked above.