Recently, large companies have been scammed by illegal encryption viruses called ransomwares. The scammer sends out threats to destroy or publish someone’s files unless they pay up a ransom.
Recently, the virus called WannaCry forced people to pay bitcoins* in order to get their own files back. Ransomware takes files hostage, so to speak, and demand money to hand them back to the owner. Sometimes the threat is not real, or even if you pay, you don’t get your files back.
These kinds of scams have been running since 1989 but started going global around 2012. Recently they did an attack on the NHS which caused many patients to miss appointments, meaning they did not get their much needed medication. For every 200,000 machines that an illegal group attacks and encrypts, they earn around $50,000 dollars worth of bitcoin. In 150 countries WannaCry had at least 200,000 victims.
* If you are wondering, bitcoins are an online currency that is sometimes used for scams, but not all bitcoin trades are a scam. In fact, this currency is becoming more and more popular.
By: Alexander and George