Websense, primary anti-virus firm, has warned that cyber creeps are increasingly making use of ransomware, which could lead the small businesses at risk. Recently the company claimed to have found a variant of ransomware, a pernicious program that takes partial control of documents on the computer of a victim and asks for a payment with a view to decrypting the files.
The firm said that this week a hotmail user logged into their account to discover that scammers had obliterated each and every one of his emails apart from the one, which was from hacker demanding cash in exchange for bringing back the vanished info. Should this have been the possessor or an employee of a small business, the intellectual property (IP) of the company would have been jeopardized.
Joel Camissar, country manager at Websense ANZ, said,
The Hotmail account of the victim is thought to have been hacked after they used a spyware-infected computer in a Spanish Internet cafe. The hackers had deleted everything from their inbox, outbox and removed all his contacts.
