Crooks are sending email to naive office-workers, warning that their computers have been 0wned and demanding small sums of money in exchange for not getting them fired by filling their machines with child-porn.
What caught my eye about this is that it preys on the fact that most office-workers are required to sign documents saying that they understand that all of their Internetn use can be monitored, and that being caught with porn on your PC is a no-questions-asked firing offense.
These two measures, meant to enhance "security" by intimidating end-users into believing that they are universally surveilled and readily fired, has instead had the consequence of turning them into patsies for con-artists who exploit their fear to blackmail them.
In the annals of cybercrime, investigators acknowledge the racket is one of the most difficult to crack. Because the ransom is small, people tend to pay up and keep quiet…
The e-mail said several security vulnerabilities had been detected on the university's network and that unless the e-mail recipient transferred 20 euros ($25) to the author's online bank account, he would release a series of viruses capable of deleting a host of computer files.
