Microsoft is warning users to be on the look-out for a new “Ransomware” scam that apparently hackers are using to pose as law enforcement officers in order to extort money from victims.
These hackers are using pop-up notifications, which appear to be from a law enforcement agency, indicating evidence of illegal activities such as child porn and email exchanges with known terrorist groups taking place on the victims computer and the victim must pay a fine within 24 hours or the victims hard drives will be erased.
“What is remarkable in the cases of ransomware we’ve seen lately is the effort that the authors have put into creating different versions for every targeted country. We’ve so far seen variants localized into four languages: English, Spanish, German, and Dutch,” Microsoft stated. The agencies that are being used by hackers include The German Federal Police, GEMA (Germany’s performance rights organization), The Swiss “Federal Department of Justice and Police”, The UK “Metropolitan Police”, The Spanish Police, and The Dutch Police.
Microsoft recommends infected users visit the Malware Protection Center in order to recover from this infection. It goes without saying that users must stay on top of security updates and browser updates to prevent any major problems.
