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:
- Canadian indicted for launching ransomware attacks on orgs in US, Canada
December 7, 2021
The FBI and Justice Department unsealed indictments today leveling a number of charges against 31-year-old Canadian Matthew Philbert for his alleged involvement in several ransomware attacks. Officials from the Ontario Provincial Police held a press conference on Tuesday to announce the charges and Philbert’s arrest in Ottawa. In a statement, US Attorney Bryan Wilson of the District ...
- The story of the year: ransomware in the headlines
December 7, 2021
In the past twelve months, the word “ransomware” has popped up in countless headlines worldwide across both print and digital publications: The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, the New York Times. It is no longer just being discussed by CISOs and security professionals, but politicians, school administrators, and hospital directors. Words like Babuk and REvil ...
- Two Birds With One Stone: An Introduction To V8 And JIT Exploitation
December 7, 2021
In this special blog series, ZDI Vulnerability Researcher Hossein Lotfi looks at the exploitation of V8 – Google’s open-source high-performance JavaScript and WebAssembly engine – through the lens of a bug used during Pwn2Own Vancouver 2021. The contest submission from Bruno Keith and Niklas Baumstark exploited both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge (Chromium) with the ...
- State of Cybersecurity in Germany in 2021
December 7, 2021
According to Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), the country faces a grave and growing threat as society becomes more digitally connected and criminals more sophisticated. The BSI said threat levels have reached red alarm levels. Threat level increased BSI published their annual report “The State of IT Security in Germany in 2021.” It highlights that ...
- Emotet now drops Cobalt Strike, fast forwards ransomware attacks
December 7, 2021
In a concerning development, the notorious Emotet malware now installs Cobalt Strike beacons directly, giving immediate network access to threat actors and making ransomware attacks imminent. Emotet is a malware infection that spreads through spam emails containing malicious Word or Excel documents. These documents utilize macros to download and install the Emotet Trojan on a victim’s ...
- NICKEL targeting government organizations across Latin America and Europe
December 6, 2021
The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) has observed NICKEL, a China-based threat actor, targeting governments, diplomatic entities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America. MSTIC has been tracking NICKEL since 2016 and observed some common activity with other actors known in the security community as APT15, APT25, ...