New Computer crime tactic !

It would be hard to find a business in Australia that did not rely on it's computer for record keeping, processing the order flow and payment for goods - and generally keeping the records that underline tax liabilities and accounting procedures.   Criminal gangs from eastern Europe have perfected a new form of piracy that breaks into these computer systems and locks everything down behind encryption data that the computer owner can not penetrate.    They then demand a " ransom " to unlock and restore these files.

This is not an attack system against giant corporations.   The victims are small business and the asking price for restoring the embargoed files is usually somewhere between $ 1,000 and $ 5,000.   Police suspect that what they know is just the tip of the iceberg.  Many people just pay up - out of sheer desperation.

A leading Internet bookmaker found his computers locked down on Cox Plate day, one of the busiest betting days of the year.  A medical clinic had it's client records locked away behind new encryption and even a small country community school was a victim.   We have come to rely on the computer so completely that we are helpless when it fails to meet our needs.

The police advise us not to pay these ransoms and they do so with good reason.   There is no guarantee that paying will result in that promise being kept, and " blackmailers " have a long history of returning to the crime scene to demand more money.   The police themselves have experts skilled in breaking into computer hard drives and recovering information related to crime scenes - but this is a slow and laborious process.   If a business took that course with computer experts they would probably eventually recover the lost information, but in the interim their business may not survive.

These crime gangs are deploying hackers with near genius skills.  Opening an infected email is one point of entry, but they have devised " brute force " methods, using computer power to sort through big numbers of de-fault passwords to crack the code.   They usually demand payment for computer unlocking via remote payment systems that leave few traces.    This is a very sophisticated and highly skilled criminal activity.

Because it is being used successfully, it seems inevitable that it will expand and attack more victims.  The wise will make sure that every aspect of the information in their computer is locked away in a remote memory unit so that if necessary - they can abandon that infected computer and start afresh with new equipment.   This form of cyber crime may be the crest of an information tsunami and it may be a good idea to have a second computer system running in tandem - but fully isolated from that system connected to the Internet.

It pays to protect your computer privacy with good firewalls, but if a computer is a vital component in the business that provides your income, you would be wise to go far beyond firewalls and install a defence beyond the reach of even the most advanced hacker.

When it comes to computers and crime, the only view of the future can be summed up with  " Expect the unexpected " !