Why Hushpuppy Uploaded a Money Receipt on Internet
"Attending!!! Your operating organization is locked due to law violation. Your IP address was used to visit websites containing pornography […] This computer lock is aimed to stop your illegal action. To unlock the computer you are obliged to pay a fine." Signed: the local/national law enforcement agency [in your country].
If you e'er get a pop-upwards window on your PC with this message, don't panic. It's all scam – you've done cipher wrong, the violation claims most likely have nothing to do with you and it'south not the police that's backside them. Such pop-upwardly windows are merely fake warnings prompted by a pesky Trojan that gets past a computers' antivirus program – if information technology has antivirus protection, at all – installs itself on the computer and blocks its contents. Then, in club to unlock it, the scared users are urged to pay a fine, usually via payment systems such as Ukash, PaySafe or any other locally available. In other words, they are victims to ransomware attacks. And the tool cybercrooks apply to prompt these attacks is the malicious software that security experts accept called the "Police Trojan" or the "Police virus".
These attacks started in early 2011, and the master targets were mostly developed countries in Europe. One yr afterward, they crossed the Atlantic, affecting users in the US and Canada. Later on, in July-September 2012, Australia was hit as well. Note, however, that these attacks have continued in all these regions, over and over over again.
How does the Law Trojan piece of work?
One thing'due south for sure – information technology's sneaky! A Police Trojan infection is usually the result of a drive-by download: a user visits or is redirected to a site with adult or gambling-related content, which hosts the said Trojan; next, due to browser vulnerability, the Trojan downloads itself on the user's reckoner that has poor or no antivirus protection at all. One time installed, it takes over the computer, blocks specific files or the computer altogether. At which betoken, it prompts the scary message, requesting bribe in exchange for "freeing" the figurer.
The kickoff variants of the Police Trojan would only block .doc files, by encryption. As the attackers expanded their scope to achieve more than and more users from unlike countries, they gradually added more than scary elements to the whole deception. In some scams they used a more sophisticated encryption organization, while in others, they programmed the Trojan to take over the users' web cams, take pictures of them or their empty chairs and insert them into the warnings along with the line "Video recording". Although there was no recording, the photos made the users believe they were monitored by the police force and added more than actuality to the scams. This, in plough, prompted them to act with urgency: they paid the and then-called fine.
Points to consider
Noteworthy is that the bulletin displayed in these Police Trojan attacks varies according to the country the infected user is from – it is written in the official language of the respective country and accompanied by the official logo, symbol, motto and name of the local/national constabulary enforcement agency. For example: "Guardia di Finanza – Insieme per la legalita" (Constabulary Trojan targeting Italian users), Metropolitan Police force – Working together for a safer London (targeting users in London, UK), "Calculator Law-breaking and Intellectual Belongings Section, United States Department of Justice".
The localized versions of the Police Trojan scam are solid proof that these attacks are not the work of rookie cybercrooks, merely that of a far more than experienced organized groups that make big coin out of scaring users into "bailing" their computers out. Nevertheless another proof that a computer without an antivirus program or with poor antivirus protection tin can lead to money draining out of your pocket right into criminals' pockets, also leaving your computer potentially damaged fifty-fifty after information technology'southward unlocked.
If the higher up do not convince you lot that protecting your reckoner with constructive antivirus software is mandatory, but consider this as well: the fact cybercrooks have unleashed more sophisticated variants of the Trojan in more targeted attacks, proves their active intention in keeping the whole charade going on for as long equally possible. So yous might expect them to user further, more diverse scare tactics in the futurity.
Officer, please show me your badge!
Scareware is meant to practise just that: scare y'all. If such "official" messages that look equally coming from national security/police enforcing bodies appear on your desktop, in your e-mail inbox, or even in your Facebook notifications, apply mutual sense. National bodies would never make use of such means to let you know of some illegality that you might've committed. Just to exist sure, address and bank check with the corresponding body in person or by telephone.
Here's a couple more tips to stay safe from such ransomware and scareware.
Think: don't cave in to accusations of crimes you know you didn't commit. Likewise, get BullGuard Antivirus 2013 to surf the spider web safely and with confidence!
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Source: https://www.bullguard.com/bullguard-security-center/internet-security/internet-threats/the-police-trojan.aspx