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:
- Nation-State APTs Target U.S. Utilities With Dangerous Malware
August 2, 2019
Researchers believe that nation-state actors are behind several spearphishing campaigns targeting U.S. utility companies with a newly-identified malware, which has the capabilities to view system data and reboot machines. Lure emails were sent to three U.S. utilities companies between July 19 and 25. They purported to be from a U.S.-based engineering licensing board, but actually contained ...
- GermanWiper ransomware hits Germany hard, destroys files, asks for ransom
August 2, 2019
For the past week, a new ransomware strain has been wreaking havoc across Germany. Named GermanWiper, this ransomware doesn’t encrypt files but instead it rewrites their content with zeroes, permanently destroying users’ data. As a result, any users who get infected by this ransomware should be aware that paying the ransom demand will not help them ...
- Financial threats in H1 2019
July 31, 2019
Financial cyberthreats are malicious programs that attack users of online banking services, electronic money, cryptocurrency and other similar services, as well as threats aimed at gaining access to financial organizations and their infrastructure. Kaspersky experts regularly analyze the statistics that the company’s products anonymously send to the cloud infrastructure of the Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) ...
- Inside Malware Markets: Current Trends and Competitive Forces
July 30, 2019
Regardless of location, legitimacy, or legality, markets of all kinds act in accordance with a prevailing set of forces. Made famous by business management guru Michael Porter, his eponymous Five Forces generally dictate how markets will operate — that includes markets for malware. Porter’s Five Forces Rivalry Among Existing Competitors Bargaining Power of Suppliers Bargaining Power of Buyers Threat of ...
- Cyberattack warning to small plane owners: How your aircraft could be vulnerable
July 30, 2019
The alert from the DHS critical infrastructure computer emergency response team. warns that modern flight systems are vulnerable to hacking if a person manages to gain unrestricted access to an aircraft. The alert also recommends that small plane owners restrict unauthorized physical access to their aircraft the best they can. It warns that access should remain limited until ...
- Rare Steganography Hack Can Compromise Fully Patched Websites
July 26, 2019
An unusual steganographic technique that an attacker can use to implant a malicious webshell on unsuspecting websites has been spotted in Latin America. According to research from Trustwave shared exclusively with Threatpost, a forensic investigation showed that an adversary is implanting PHP code into JPEG files’ EXIF headers in order to upload malware onto targeted ...