Trojan horse: Your money or your files
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By Joris Evers
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: April 28, 2006, 5:21 PM PDT
In another example of "ransomware," a new Trojan horse threatens to delete files unless the victim pays up, security experts have warned.
When activated, the Trojan horse, dubbed Ransom-A by antivirus company Sophos, displays some explicit images. It then shows an expletive message that demands a $10.99 payment, or it will delete one file every 30 minutes, security experts at SophosLabs said in a statement published Friday.
"This Trojan horse is designed to take your data hostage and tries to scare users into paying up quickly by threatening to wipe files one-by-one," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said in the statement.
The Trojan asks for payment via the Western Union money transfer service and promises delivery of a special disarming code after the ransom is paid, Sophos said.
This is the second example of malicious software that seeks to extort money in as many months. In March, a Trojan horse that encrypts victims' files and demands a $300 payment to have them decrypted and unlocked made the rounds. A similar attack was spotted in May of last year.
"Our concern is that this may be the beginning of a growing trend of malware designed to extort money," Cluley said.
Sophos recommends that people make backups of their data and run updated security software for protection against pests such as these ransom-demanding Trojans. As a general rule, Internet users should be cautious when opening e-mail attachments and surfing untrusted Web sites. -
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repost?
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wtf?
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Another reason to backup files regularly
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fuk! smart!
but ive no idea how they go about collecting those ransoms though.. there is bound to be like a day lag when sending and receiving payments and getting this "code" to unlock the virus. by den a lot of files will be gone. -
This will force users to back up regularly.
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Originally posted by ndmmxiaomayi:This will force users to back up regularly.
Correction. This will force some users (~0.000000000000%) to back up regularly. -
Originally posted by Parka: Correction. This will force some users (~0.000000000000%) to back up regularly.
They need to be bitten once.
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They can collect ransom, but the trojan horse has already started overwriting or damaged some files in the mean time. It's quite hard to control.Originally posted by Ito_^: fuk! smart!
but ive no idea how they go about collecting those ransoms though.. there is bound to be like a day lag when sending and receiving payments and getting this "code" to unlock the virus. by den a lot of files will be gone. -
........
Hope the fella who created that Trojan horse gets thrown in jail for life.
Dunno what goes on in the heads of those buggers....