“There is a lot of money at stake here, so criminals are always going to be interested,” said
Mr. Hypponen, whose company is still tracking the fallout from last month’s WannaCry virus.
Asaf Cidon, a vice president at the security company Barracuda Networks who studies ransomware, said
that criminals had become more sophisticated in the last year, especially in how they choose their victims.
The attack late last year was, according to the cybersecurity researchers who discovered what they now call
the Popcorn Time ransomware, the first Ponzi scheme for one of the internet’s oldest types of cyberattacks.
Ponzi Scheme Meets Ransomware for a Doubly Malicious Attack -
By SHEERA FRENKELJUNE 6, 2017
SAN FRANCISCO — The first message to pop up on the computer screen let the victims know they had been hacked.
The victim had a choice: Pay the hackers a ransom of one bitcoin, a digital currency worth roughly $2,365, in
exchange for regaining access to the computer, or try to infect two new people on behalf of the attackers.