Ransomware, plus Slobodan Milosevic and viruses

By Ellen Messmer, NetworkWorld.com, 03/16/06

A virus that encrypts documents and demands a ransom to de-crypt them has been spotted making its way slowly across the Internet. Plus, another virus seeks to exploit the death of Slobodan Milosevic to fool users into opening a malicious attachment.

The trojan horse is known as "ransomware" because of its demand for money--in this case $300 to be placed in an account at the e-gold money-transfer site in exchange for a password to access the information.

At least one anti-virus vendor, Sophos, has analyzed the malicious code and found a way to extract the password.

Another threat making the rounds is a spam message claiming to have a photo containing secret evidence about the death of former Yugoslav president and suspected war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, who died suddenly last Saturday, prompting an investigation. But opening the attchment simply spreads the virus.

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