The Winlock case – I’m taking bets!
Interesting news on Trojan SMS Blockers (Winlock etc). These programs block Windows and demand a ransom in the form of a text message which is sent to short number for a fee. It’s a very popular type of racket at the moment, both in Russia and a few other countries.
The whole affair has now reached the General Prosecutor’s office of Russia – the criminals have been identified and detained (or so it seems) and will be prosecuted in Moscow soon.
Altogether the criminals have earned an estimated 790,000 roubles, or $25K. Moreover, they have caused other damages by blocking or crashing a yet to be determined number of personal and company PCs. Very often people have needed to re-install the OS and all software and then restore data from backups – even after paying the ransom.
But I wanted to focus on the outcome – or the possible outcome of this incident, not on the investigation, arrests and so forth.
Tags: anti-virus, Industry News, Industry News, Information Technology, Internet Security, Kaspersky, security, Software, virus
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