Kidnappers in France target cryptocurrency entrepreneurs for ransom


French police rescued the father of a wealthy cryptocurrency entrepreneur in a nighttime raid after he was taken hostage for ransom, the latest alleged criminal effort in France to extort people involved in the management of digital assets.

The man was kidnapped Thursday morning in Paris, the prosecutor’s office said Sunday. “The victim turned out to be the father of a man who made his fortune in cryptocurrencies, and the incident was accompanied by a ransom demand,” its statement said, without giving their names or other specifics about their identities. Police investigators located the hostage in a house in the Essonne region south of Paris, from which he was rescued on Saturday night, the prosecutor’s office said.

Read more…
Source: AP News


Sign up for our Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.


Related:

  • OriginBotnet Spreads via Malicious Word Document

    September 11, 2023

    In August, FortiGuard Labs obtained a Word document containing a malicious URL designed to entice victims to download a malware loader. This loader employs a binary padding evasion strategy that adds null bytes to increase the file’s size to 400 MB. The payloads of this loader include OriginBotnet for keylogging and password recovery, RedLine Clipper ...

  • Deleting Your Way Into SYSTEM: Why Arbitrary File Deletion Vulnerabilities Matter

    September 11, 2023

    Windows arbitrary file deletion vulnerabilities should no longer be considered mere annoyances or tools for Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. Over the past couple of years, these vulnerabilities have matured into potent threats capable of unearthing a portal to full system compromise. This transformation is exemplified in CVE-2023-27470 (an arbitrary file deletion vulnerability in N-Able’s Take Control Agent ...

  • Analyzing Cuba ransomware

    September 11, 2023

    The group’s offensives first got on Kaspersky researchers radar in late 2020. Back then, the cybercriminals had not yet adopted the moniker “Cuba”; they were known as “Tropical Scorpius”. Cuba mostly targets organizations in the United States, Canada and Europe. The gang has scored a series of resonant attacks on oil companies, financial services, government ...

  • Evil Telegram doppelganger attacks Chinese users

    September 8, 2023

    UPDATE 11.09.2023. Google has informed us that all the apps were deleted from the Google Play store A while ago Kaspersky researchers discovered a bunch of Telegram mods on Google Play with descriptions in traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese and Uighur. The vendor says these are the fastest apps which use a distributed network of data processing ...

  • Storm-0558: Understanding How Microsoft Failed to Protect Itself

    September 7, 2023

    You’re undoubtedly familiar with the so-called Storm-0558 attacks from July 2023. If not a quick recap: these attacks (widely attributed as the work of the Chinese government) compromised a number of high-value Exchange Online mailboxes, including the US Secretary of Commerce and the US Ambassador to China. Given the sensitivity of the mailboxes, it’s likely ...

  • CISA, FBI, and CNMF Release Advisory on Multiple Nation-State Threat Actors Exploit CVE-2022-47966 and CVE-2022-42475

    September 7, 2023

    Today, CISA, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and U.S. Cyber Command’s Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF) published a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA), Multiple Nation-State Threat Actors Exploit CVE-2022-47966 and CVE-2022-42475. This CSA provides information on an incident at an Aeronautical Sector organization, with malicious activity occurring as early as January 2023. CISA, FBI, and CNMF confirmed ...