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:

  • macOS users targeted with new Tarmac malware

    October 11, 2019

    Security researchers have discovered a new piece of Mac malware; however, some of its purpose and full features will remain a mystery for a little longer. Named Tarmac (OSX/Tarmac), this new malware was distributed to macOS users via online malvertising (malicious ads) campaigns. These malicious ads ran rogue code inside a Mac user’s browser to redirect the ...

  • New espionage malware found targeting Russian-speaking users in Eastern Europe

    October 10, 2019

    Security researchers have discovered an advanced malware strain that’s been deployed to spy on diplomats and Russian-speaking users in Eastern Europe. The malware, named Attor, has been used in attacks since 2013 but was only discovered last year, according to an ESET report published today. ESET said the malware bears the signs of a targeted espionage campaign ...

  • More xHunt – New PowerShell Backdoor Blocked Through DNS Tunnel Detection

    October 10, 2019

    During our continued analysis of the xHunt campaign, we observed several domains with ties to the pasta58com, being used as the C2 server for a new PowerShell based backdoor that we’ve named CASHY200. This PowerShell backdoor ...

  • CVE-2019-16928: Exploiting an Exim Vulnerability via EHLO Strings

    October 10, 2019

    In September, security researchers from the QAX-A-Team discovered the existence of CVE-2019-16928, a vulnerability involving the mail transfer agent Exim. Exim accounts for over 50% of publicly reachable mail servers on the internet. What makes the bug particularly noteworthy is that threat actors could exploit it to perform denial of service (DoS) or possibly even remote code execution ...

  • Intelligence Agencies Warn Of Flaw With VPN Products

    October 9, 2019

    Both the US NSA and UK NCSC warn hackers are actively exploiting vulnerabilities in VPN products Both the US National Security Agency (NSA) and a GQHC agency in the United Kingdom have issued warnings about “multiple vulnerabilities in Virtual Private Network (VPN) applications.” Both the NSA and the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) warned that advanced persistent threat (APT) ...

  • FIN6 Compromised E-commerce Platform via Magecart to Inject Credit Card Skimmers Into Thousands of Online Shops

    October 9, 2019

    trend Micro discovered that the online credit card skimming attack known as Magecart or E-Skimming was actively operating on 3,126 online shops. Our data shows that the attack started on September 7, 2019. All of the impacted online shops are hosted on the cloud platform of the e-commerce service provider “Volusion,” one of the top e-commerce platforms in the market. ...