[Vision2020] For PC Virus Victims, Pay or Else

Art Deco art.deco.studios at gmail.com
Thu Dec 6 05:11:48 PST 2012


  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

------------------------------
December 5, 2012
For PC Virus Victims, Pay or Else By NICOLE
PERLROTH<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/nicole_perlroth/index.html>

CULVER CITY, Calif. — Kidnappers used to make ransom notes with letters cut
out of magazines. Now, notes simply pop up on your computer screen, except
the hostage is your PC.

In the past year, hundreds of thousands of people across the world have
switched on their computers to find distressing messages alerting them that
they no longer have access to their PCs or any of the files on them.

The messages claim to be from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some 20
other law enforcement agencies across the globe or, most recently,
Anonymous<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/anonymous_internet_group/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
a shadowy group of hackers. The computer users are told that the only way
to get their machines back is to pay a steep fine.

And, curiously, it’s working. The scheme is making more than $5 million a
year, according to computer security experts who are tracking them.

The scourge dates to 2009 in Eastern Europe. Three years later, with
business booming, the perpetrators have moved west. Security experts say
that there are now more than 16 gangs of sophisticated criminals extorting
millions from victims across Europe.

The threat, known as ransomware, recently hit the United States. Some gangs
have abandoned previously lucrative schemes, like fake antivirus scams and
banking trojans, to focus on ransomware full time.

Essentially online extortion, ransomware involves infecting a user’s
computer with a virus that locks it. The attackers demand money before the
computer will be unlocked, but once the money is paid, they rarely unlock
it.

In the vast majority of cases, victims do not regain access to their
computer unless they hire a computer technician to remove the virus
manually. And even then, they risk losing all files and data because the
best way to remove the virus is to wipe the computer clean.

It may be hard to fathom why anyone would agree to fork over hundreds of
dollars to a demanding stranger, but security researchers estimate that 2.9
percent of compromised computer owners take the bait and pay. That, they
say, is an extremely conservative estimate. In some countries, the payout
rate has been as high as 15 percent.

That people do fall for it is a testament to criminals’ increasingly
targeted and inventive methods. Early variations of ransomware locked
computers, displayed images of pornography and, in Russian, demanded a fee
— often more than $400 — to have it removed. Current variants are more
targeted and toy with victims’ consciences.

Researchers say criminals now use victims’ Internet addresses to customize
ransom notes in their native tongue. Instead of pornographic images,
criminals flash messages from local law enforcement agencies accusing them
of visiting illegal pornography, gambling or piracy sites and demand they
pay a fine to unlock their computer.

Victims in the United States see messages in English purporting to be from
the F.B.I. or Justice Department. In the Netherlands, people get a similar
message, in Dutch, from the local police. (Some Irish variations even
demand money in Gaelic.) The latest variants speak to victims through
recorded audio messages that tell users that if they do not pay within 48
hours, they will face criminal charges. Some even show footage from a
computer’s webcam to give the illusion that law enforcement is watching.

The messages often demand that victims buy a preloaded debit card that can
be purchased at a local drugstore — and enter the PIN. That way it’s
impossible for victims to cancel the transaction once it becomes clear that
criminals have no intention of unlocking their PC.

The hunt is on to find these gangs. Researchers at Symantec said they had
identified 16 ransomware gangs. They tracked one gang that tried to infect
more than 500,000 PCs over an 18-day period. But even if researchers can
track their Internet addresses, catching and convicting those responsible
can be difficult. It requires cooperation among global law enforcement, and
such criminals are skilled at destroying evidence.

Charlie Hurel, an independent security researcher based in France, was able
to hack into one group’s computers to discover just how gullible their
victims could be. On one day last month, the criminals’ accounting showed
that they were able to infect 18,941 computers, 93 percent of all attempts.
Of those who received a ransom message that day, 15 percent paid. In most
cases, Mr. Hurel said, hackers demanded 100 euros, making their haul for
one day’s work more than $400,000.

That is significantly more than hackers were making from fake antivirus
schemes a few years ago, when so-called “scareware” was at its peak and
criminals could make as much as $158,000 in one week.

Scareware dropped significantly last year after a global clampdown by law
enforcement and private security researchers. Internecine war between
scareware gangs put the final nail in the coffin. As Russian criminal
networks started fighting for a smaller share of profits, they tried to
take each other out with denial of service attacks.

Now, security researchers are finding that some of the same criminals who
closed down scareware operations as recently as a year ago are back
deploying ransomware.

“Things went quiet,” said Eric Chien, a researcher at Symantec who has been
tracking ransomware scams. “Now we are seeing a sudden ramp-up of
ransomware using similar methods.”

Victims become infected in many ways. In most cases, people visit
compromised Web sites that download the program to their machines without
so much as a click. Criminals have a penchant for infecting pornography
sites because it makes their law enforcement threats more credible and
because embarrassing people who were looking at pornography makes them more
likely to pay. Symantec’s researchers say there is also evidence that they
are paying advertisers on sex-based sites to feature malicious links that
download ransomware onto victims’ machines.

“As opposed to fooling you, criminals are now bullying users into paying
them by pretending the cops are banging down their doors,” said Kevin
Haley, Symantec’s director of security response.

More recently, researchers at Sophos, a British computer security company,
noted that thousands of people were getting ransomware through sites hosted
by GoDaddy, the popular Web services company that manages some 50 million
domain names and hosts about five million Web sites on its servers.

Sophos said hackers were breaking into GoDaddy users’ accounts with stolen
passwords and setting up what is known as a subdomain. So instead of, say,
www.nameofsite.com, hackers would set up the Web address nameofsite.blog.com,
then send e-mails to customers with the link to the subdomain which —
because it appeared to come from a trusted source — was more likely to lure
clicks.

Scott Gerlach, GoDaddy’s director of information security operations, said
it appeared the accounts had been compromised because account owners
independently clicked on a malicious link or were compromised by a computer
virus that stole password credentials. He advised users to enable GoDaddy’s
two-step authentication
option<http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/7502/enabling-twostep-authentication>,
which sends a second password to users’ cellphones every time they try to
log in, preventing criminals from cracking their account with one stolen
password and alerting users when they try.

One of the scarier things about ransomware is that criminals can use
victims’ machines however they like. While the computer is locked, the
criminals can steal passwords and even get into the victims’ online bank
accounts.

Security experts warn to never pay the ransom. A number of vendors offer
solutions for unlocking machines without paying the ransom, including
Symantec, Sophos and F-Secure. The best solution is to visit a local repair
shop to wipe the machine clean and reinstall backup files and software.

“This is the new Nigerian e-mail scam,” Mr. Haley said. “We’ll be talking
about this for the next two years.”


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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