In late October, Russian-speaking users began receiving malicious spam allegedly from law enforcement and government authorities, containing ransomware. ForkLog reported this, citing experts from Kaspersky Lab.
The company recorded several thousand emails warning users about an uptick in hacker activity and offering them to download a ‘special update for security systems’ to protect devices from various online threats. After installing such a solution, the user would supposedly receive a code enabling ‘to detect and prevent a cyberattack’.
In reality, by following the provided link, the user downloaded a ransomware program from the Trojan-Ransom.Python.Agent family. For restoring access to the data, the attackers demanded a ransom of 0.009 BTC.
Kaspersky Lab specialists noted that the mailing was sent using a legitimate service, and the sender’s address resembled that of an official mailbox of one of the agencies.
As reported by US company SonicWall, in July, amid a drop in Bitcoin’s price, the number of ransomware attacks substantially decreased.
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