Hackers Held Data on 5,000 Canadians Hostage and the Government Didn’t Tell Anyone
Last year, a clever piece of code grabbed the computers of a foreign company, and held them hostage — detaining information on 5,000 Canadian passport applicants in the process.
The malware demanded an undisclosed sum of money, or else all the computer's data would be encrypted forever, effectively locking it and throwing away the key.
This type of virus, often referred to as ransomware, is becoming increasingly prolific, reportedly favored by hackers in Russia looking for an effective payoff. The malware, usually installed by convincing an unwitting user to click a malicious link, demanding anywhere from $200 to $5,000 — usually in bitcoin — in a set amount of time, marked by a countdown clock.
