Ransomware Extortion Scam Locks Machines, Demands Payment

Discussion in 'malware problems & news' started by TheKid7, Dec 21, 2012.

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  1. TheKid7

    TheKid7 Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jul 22, 2006
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    3,571
    Ransomware Extortion Scam Locks Machines, Demands Payment:
    http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/ransomware-extortion-scam-locks-machines-demands-payment-122112
     
  2. How do people get this stuff? Seriously... Must be through Torrents or doing something naughty.

    I suppose all we can do is *SIGH* Silly people.
     
  3. BrandiCandi

    BrandiCandi Guest

    It's not happening on the user's computers. It's happening on trusted websites they visit.

    It happens because everyone and their brother can easily create and run a web server. It takes next to no knowledge to launch a web page. My 10-year-old nephew can spin up a perfectly functioning web server in the Amazon cloud in about 3 minutes. And because it's so easy to install and run them, there is a misconception that they're easy to maintain. Those web pages can get owned with very little effort by a moderately experienced attacker. The number of websites out there that are compromised are simply astonishing. It takes actual knowledge and skill to properly configure a web server and the web pages, which the vast majority of the world does not have.

    From an attacker's perspective, why wouldn't you attack the lowest hanging fruit? Why would you go to the trouble of searching for victims out there when you can let some poor web admin automatically direct all the traffic to your malicious site?

    So you as a user can surf to only your known, trusted domains and still be redirected to a malicious site that would install such ransomware.

    There are no stupid users in this case, just stupid website administrators.
     
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