What is Cyber Extortion?

 

Cyber Extortion is a crime involving an attack or threat of attack coupled with a demand for money to avert or stop the attack. Simple understanding, it is similar to the concept of blackmailing in which victims are forced to pay to avoid its effect. Cyber Extortion can take many forms. The most common is denial of service (DoS) attacks against corporate websites. The attacker might initiate a ping storm and telephone the president of the company, demanding that money be wired to a bank account in a foreign country in exchange for stopping the attack. However in recent years, cybercriminals have developed new variant of ransomware which encrypts the victim's data. The extortionist's victim typically receives an email that offers the private decryption key in exchange for a monetary payment in Bitcoins or other digital currency. Cyber Extortion can be lucrative, netting attackers millions of dollars annually. Unfortunately, as with other types of extortion, payment does not guarantee that further cyber-attacks will not be launched.

 

 Common Threats Involving of Cyber Extortion

Basically, it is any type of malicious program or IT code whose objective is to infiltrate networks and computers to cause damage, spy, and steal information. The most dangerous types of malware are:

 

RANSOMWARE It blocks the PC, removing all user control, encrypts files and demands a financial ransom to return them.	EXPLOIT It takes advantage of a security fault or vulnerability in the communication protocols to enter your computer.
SPYWARE It collects names, access details, passwords, and any type of information about your company	PHISHING It creates a false URL to obtain your data and steal your identity, with the aim of stealing from your bank accounts.
TROJAN It installs various applications so that hackers can control the computer. They control your files and steal your confidential information.	APT (ADVANCED PERSISTENT THREAT) It’s a computer process that penetrates your security to control and monitor it, being able to continually extract information for business or political means.
SCAM It tricks you with false promotions such as holidays or lotteries, then asks you for money to access the “prize”.	BACKDOOR It opens a “back door” to take control of your system.
KEYLOGGER It collects and sends all keystrokes completed by the user.	BOT It is a program that remotely controls your PC
WORM It infects all of your computers, slowing down the network and even blocking access to communications.

  Cyber Extortion Victim

Technical Services strongly advice users, do not give in to the cybercriminals’ blackmail because there is no guarantee that this will solve the problem. In fact, in many cases, the victim of the blackmailing has given over the amount demanded but without receiving the decryption key (or even a corrupted key). None of these outcomes can help get the kidnapped information back. It is also recommended to completely wipe all traces of malware from the computers by using the assigned antivirus. Moreover, as to prevent from becoming the victims, it is also recommended that you make backup copies of critical files every so often, just in case we can help to restore if your files are not recoverable due to ransomware attack.