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Stand and deliver! Your money or your files!

By Gearhead, NetworkWorld.com, 05/25/05

It had to happen. It seems like a story that should be old news but it turns out that for the first time hackers have attempted to extort money not by destroying data or denying communications service but by encrypting files and demanding money to decrypt them!

According to various reports such as the one in the Chicago Sun-Times hackers managed to get a worm inside an anonymous corporation that grabbed files and encrypted them. The hackers then demanded $200 for the decryption key.

The story of the blackmail attempt was released by San Diego-based Websense Inc. and the encrypted documents reportedly included documents, photographs and spreadsheets.

Just imagine if this happened in your organization. What would it take to get those Excel spreadsheets back or recover those Word documents? Would it be cheaper to pay the blackmail then recover the last versions from a backup and recreate any changes? At $200 it certainly would. And probably at $2,000 or even $20,000 for big companies that get hit on large scale.

The solution other than sound defenses and thorough use of anti-virus and anti-spyware tools? Regular backups and secure versioning. The latter is something few organizations have implemented but given the cost of your key work files being unavailable for a few days, any expenditure to ensure continuity and reliability looks cheap.

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