#RANSOMWARE ON APPLE DEVICES ANDROID#
#RANSOMWARE ON APPLE DEVICES WINDOWS#

targeted threat of ransomware we’ve seen,” said Jeremy Linden, a senior security product manager at Lookout. The only way to regain control of your device is to pay several hundred dollars in a MoneyPak voucher to the cybercriminals Lookout’s engineers determined that the authors are likely from Russia or somewhere else is Eastern Europe based on language and slang found in the code. You can’t navigate away and even if you try restarting your phone, the message pops back up immediately. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has locked you out of your phone and the only way to regain access to all your data is to pay us.” Victims get some variation of the following message: 'You are guilty of child porn, child abuse, zoophilia or sending out bulk spam. Users get infected with fake apps appearing to be Adobe Flash and well-known antivirus apps that pretend to scan the device when launched.

#RANSOMWARE ON APPLE DEVICES ANDROID#

Lookout, a San Francisco-based mobile security firm first discovered the ScarePakage mobile ransomware targeting Android users in the US in late August 2014. Android Ransomwareĩ00,000 Android phones were hit by this ransomware in a span of just 30 days. Agents subsequently searched the hackers' apartments and seized PCs, phones, SIM cards and literature on hacking. The pair was caught on CCTV when they were withdrawing victims’ payments at an ATM. If a hacker gets access to your Apple ID they can use it to create an iCloud account which can then be used to lock any associated Apple devices remotely. Russian police said the two hackers were responsible for scamming users in Russia, but didn’t mention victims in Australia and the UK.Ī 23-year-old and a 17-year-old from Moscow confessed to phishing Apple users with an ‘online video service’ that required them to enter their Apple IDs and using the Find My iPhone feature to lock the devices until the victims paid a ransom of up to $100 USD.

Less than a month after we heard about this attack, John Zorabedian at Sophos reported that two criminals behind the attack were arrested by Russian authorities. I went to check my phone and there was a message on the screen (it's still there) saying that my device(s) had been hacked by Oleg Pliss and they demanded $100 USD/EUR (sent by paypal to lock404(at)) to return them to me.' One user from Melbourne, said: ' I was using my iPad a short while ago when suddenly it locked itself. In May of 2014, a large number of people mostly located in Australia and the UK, are reporting they have come under an unexplained attack that holds their iPhones and iPads hostage and demands they pay a $100 ransom.

#RANSOMWARE ON APPLE DEVICES WINDOWS#

JD Sherry of Trend Micro discussed the latest mobile security trends and threats at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit. He touches on the shift of ransomware from PCs to mobile devices. Here is a roundup of the latest mobile threats: iPhone RansomwareĪfter ransomware hit Windows PCs and Android devices, some miscreant has found a way to pull a similar scam for Apple devices.

That was my quote in a September 2012 CNN Money article titled Your smartphone will (eventually) be hacked, and boy has it ever come true. Malware on mobile phones is going to be as prevalent as on the PC. 'The money is in mobile, and that's where they're moving.

So why hasn't the smartphone Armageddon happened yet? Like PCs back in the early days - the 1990s - mobile phones are largely unprotected by antivirus software, and they're a treasure trove of valuable information. Security experts have warned for years that our smartphones are due for a major cyberattack.

Ransomware on apple devices