Ransomware Targets Porn Viewers

Ransomware Targets Porn Viewers

Ransomware activity has spiked again last week worldwide with the largest cyber gangs targeting pornography viewers.

Symantec predicted this year’s upswing and continual growth of the highly profitable malware, which extorts more than US$5 million dollars a year from its victims.

While several variants of the ransomware threat are responsible for the overall spike, Trojan.Ransomlock.Y is currently taking centrestage.

This variant is being distributed through pornographic websites leading to the Impact Exploit kit.

Symantec has the following Intrusion Prevention Signatures (IPS) in place for the Impact Exploit kit and is observing a similar telemetry spike around detections of this exploit kit:
• Web Attack: Impact Exploit Kit Website
• Web Attack: Impact Exploit Kit Website 2
• Web Attack: Impact Exploit Kit Website 3

The ransomware extortion scam has been in existence now for a number of years but its popularity among cybercriminals has grown over the last two years and it continues to indiscriminately plague computer users in greater numbers.

Symantec has tracked this growing menace in various blogs, a whitepaper, and a video.

According to Symantec, this year attackers will use more professional ransom screens, up the emotional stakes to motivate their victims, and use methods that make it harder to recover once compromised.

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