interesting new twist
on the plus side - if that happens you get your data back!
Ransomware-peddling cybercrooks have come up with a sinister twist to their increasingly well-worn scam – online publishing. Instead of just simply encrypting files on compromised Windows PCs, the relatively new Chimera ransomware offers victims a threat – if they don’t pay up, their data will be published online, presumably …
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>For example, confidential company spreadsheets could have the exact values altered, rendering them useless for accounts, but useful enough to expose the financial working of the company in question.
That would be a lot of effort for the scammers. Even just looking through these TBs of data looking for something that *might* be embarrassing, and then somehow advertising it to a very bored internet would be a lot of effort for very little chance of reward.
As the researchers suggest, it is mostly an idle threat meant to scare people into giving them coins. It is far, far easier to make the threat than to carry it out.
My first thoughts exactly. Considering I have only very few things on most devices I would not like others to see (travelling internationally does that to you "why, yes, Sir, here is my phone and my laptop, no, I do not mind if you copy the data...")
What was it somebody said (way back)? Backups are for losers, the pros let the web mirror their stuff? (along those lines, anyway).
Changing the numbers and stuff seems like too much work, I feel this is an automated machinery...
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Hello good evening and welcome, to BLACKMAIL!
Yes, it's another edition of the game in which you can play with *yourself*. And to start tonight's show, let's see our first contestant, all the way from Manchester, on the big screen please:
MRS. BETTY TEAL! - Hello, Mrs. Teal, lovely to have you on the show. Now Mrs. Teal, if you're looking in tonight, this is for 15 pounds: and is to stop us from revealing the name of your LOVER IN BOULTON!
I do freelance graphics and my Archived Projects as well as live take up about 10TB (all backed up on removable disks I will add). I think I'd notice the traffic going the wrong way and it would give me plenty of time to work out where the data was going....
I hope they have a 'totally unlimited scammers package' - could cost them a lot of money otherwise.
Bring it on.