Ransomware makes child porn menaces in broken English

Earlier this week, the researchers at SophosLabs examined a new strain of ransomware that had been discovered in the wild.

The malware encrypts files on the victim’s computer – and demands that a ransom is paid for the safe return of their contents.

Users whose computers are hit by the malware are told to respond with a unique ID number to a Gmail or Live webmail address for the password that will unlock their data.

You can imagine how disturbing this could be to a computer user who did not have a reliable recent backup of their important documents, spreadsheets and databases.

What makes things even more menacing is that the cybercriminals don’t rely purely upon the loss of data access to be an incentive to pay the ransom of 3000 Euros. They also threaten to contact the police with a “special password” that will reveal spamming software and “child pornography”…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to read more of the exclusive content we post.

Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.