About

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that infects a computer and blocks access to the machine's system files, demanding a payment from the owner before the restriction is removed.

Origin

In 1989, London, England resident Dr. Joseph Popp authored a trojan horse virus known as the Aids Info Disk, which prevented users from accessing certain directories and encrypted the C: drive, demanding a payment to a post office in Panama to unlock the files. Popp was subsequently arrested by British authorities and charged with eleven counts of blackmail.

Spread

In September 2005, the tech news blog NetworkWorld^[4] published an article describing ransomware as the "latest security worry." Several ransomware programs surface online over the next year, including the GPCode trojan horse virus which was circumvented by international software security group Kaspersky Lab.^[5] Up until June 2008, several iterations of the malware resurfaced online. In 2010, 10 people were arrested in Russia that were implicated in creating the WinLock ransomware trojan. The following year, a malware program mimicking a Windows Product Activation notification began circulating online, which tricked victims into calling a number to collect international long distance charges. In 2012, the ransomware trojan Reveton, based on the Citadel trojan virus, began infecting a wide distribution of computers, displaying a false messaging informing the user they had been flagged for pirating software or downloading child pornography (shown below).

On October 11th, the tech news site TorrentFreak^[3] reported that a ransomware virus was circulating that falsely informed infected machines that they had been included in a Stop Online Piracy ACT black list (shown below).

In February 2013, a ransomware program surfaced online using a Stamp.EK exploit kit which tricked Internet users by promising nude photographs of celebrities. In September, the CryptoWall and CryptoLocker trojans began spreading in emails fraudulently claiming to be Australia Post delivery notices. On September 4th, 2015, Redditor puckpou submitted a post about ransomware to the /r/YouShouldKnow^[2] subreddit, where it garnered upwards of 1,200 votes (90% upvoted) and 170 comments prior to being archived. On September 21st, the radio show and podcast Radiolab published an episode titled "Darkode," which featured a story about a Russian woman who paid off ransomware attackers using bitcoin. On January 26th, 2016, the anti-malware software company Malwarebytes introduced an anti-ransomware beta. In March, the KeRanger ransomware began infecting Mac computers through the Transmission BitTorrent client.^[7]

Search Interest

External References