RansomWeb: Crooks Start Encrypting Websites And Demanding Thousands Of Dollars From Businesses

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Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans

In another startling development in the world of cyber crime, malicious hackers have started taking over website servers, encrypting the data on them and demanding payment to unlock the files. A large European financial services company, whose name was not disclosed, was the first known victim of this potentially business-destroying attack, according to Swiss security firm High-Tech Bridge, which investigated the breach in December 2014. The security firm labelled the attack RansomWeb. The brazen techniques used and the high ransom represent a more aggressive take on ransomware – malware which encrypted people’s PCs and asked for payment, typically between $100 and £1,000. Though only a handful of attacks have been seen, many expect such extortion to grow rapidly in 2015. The initial attack started six months’ prior to the victim’s website being shut down by the hackers, who were surreptitiously locking up the most critical data on the server using “on-the-fly” tweaks to the site’s PHP code functions. The criminals stored the key to decrypt the data on their own remote web server accessible only via HTTPS encrypted communications, supposed to guarantee no one with visibility on those connections could get access to the data but them. As soon as they pulled the […]

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