"The FBI is unraveling the latest in computer crime, hackers who are holding data files and documents hostage in exchange for ransom," reports the Associated Press.
The extortion program was detected by security researchers at Websense, after a corporate customer fell victim to a computer infection. It encrypted files that included documents, photographs and spreadsheets. A ransom note left behind included an e-mail address, and the attacker using the address later demanded 200 dollars for the digital keys to unlock the files.
Large scale organised blackmail in the form of DDOS have been around for a while, but this is quite unlikely to be the last we hear of such datajacking.
