“A pornography consumer who called the police in tears is among hundreds of Australians whose computers have been hacked by cyber criminals while viewing adult websites,” News.com.au reports.
“According to Fairfax, foreign gangs have been holding porn consumers ransom after infecting their PCs with viruses known as “ransomware”, which includes the ‘ukash,’ ‘reveton’ and ‘trojan.ransomlock’ viruses,” News.com.au reports. “The cyber criminals, who falsely claim to be members of the Australian Federal Police, ‘kidnap’ a computer user’s data and demand a ransom for its return, In this case, they have reportedly been activating the webcams on the users’ computers.”
News.com.au reports, “The viruses lock the desktop and post an incriminating image of the person on their screen before warning they have breached federal laws relating to child pornography, copyright or privacy, Fairfax reports. The hackers then demand the victims pay a fine of $100 or $199 using a credit card or money transfer service. They are threatened that if they don’t pay the fine within 72 hours, data files on the computer can be encrypted or wiped.
Read more in the full article here.
[Attribution: NY Post. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Sextortion warning: It’s masking tape time for webcams – June 28, 2013
Even porn is safer on a Mac.
But this ransom thing is a case of how crooked our hypocritical “morals” are. Watching porn is one of the most natural things in the world, and there should not be issues about if even someone filmed in underwear or without it.
A fool and his money are soon parted. -Thomas Tusser
“A fool and his money are some party.”
~ Wright Tabor Moore
Anyone who falls for this deserves what they get.
I know a guy who got an alleged msg from Homeland Security, demanding $399, after downloading a movie torrent.
He was about to pay it, and texted me instead. I told him he was an idiot. Homeland Security doesn’t go after downloaders of single files, and they don’t demand ransom, or make jail threats without due process.
…and they don’t speak with Indian or Nigerian accents.
No, that’s just Google’s customer helpline.
Google has a customer help line? Oh, for ADVERTISERS. Got it.
After I stopped laughing, I did remember a web trick you could do on a mac that would turn the camera on and display it in a web page. This was never transmitted over the net, of course, but it was good for freaking people out.
the old SecuritySpy app did that.
great shot of Melvin on their website.
Darn. I had this idea.
Caught red handed. Or right handed.
its not his hand that was red but his pepperoni stick
Follow the money! Why is this a problem? Bad guys have to (read: hope to) collect somewhere, right?
I’ve yet to receive a threatening e-mail from them despite the fact that I’m totally naked when sitting in front of my computer surfing porn. Have I failed as a subject of ridicule or has Apple succeeded in shielding me from malware.
One thing’s for sure. There must be gigabytes of images and videos of Steve Ballmer sitting on his naked fat ass in front of a PC surfing porn. The question is, is Ballmer’s naked pictures circulating on the interwebs worth any money.
Only if you have Bulimia and need help throwing up.
Ewww… 😕
His photos are a dollar each. Yours are free of course.
Nah, BLN pays you to receive photos of him. 😉
Well, when your Facebook profile had those same pics I guess they just gave up 😉
Damn I got scared there. Thank God I own a Mac!
😉
I see a Apple marketing effort in Australia. Want porn with no virus’s, by a Mac!
What makes you think it isn’t the Australian Federal Police?
Something similar happened to a friend of mine — Frank the Wank — when he got caught watching porn and it got back to our work mates.